The Race For Time
by theAdventurer0815
Summary: 15k years in the future, the Doctor and Sarah support a team of Earth colonists in one of the big races of the universe. But while fighting an ever evolving case of sabotage, Sarah suddenly gets involved deeper than she wanted to and the Doctor has to foil an almost perfect plan an old enemy of his has put together.
1. Two Tourists On An Adventure (Ep1)

_**The Race For Time**_

 _SUMMARY:  
{ 15k years in the future, Sarah and the Doctor support a team of Earth colonists in one of the big races of the universe. But while fighting an ever evolving case of sabotage, Sarah suddenly gets involved deeper than she wanted to and the Doctor has to foil the almost perfect plan an old enemy of his has ever put together. }_

 _What you have to expect: A fully fledged Adventure story with a heavy focus on the two main characters, twice the Sarah, some timey-wimey stuff and oh, right, there's the Roger Delgado Master in there somewhere (from the end of Episode 3 on).  
I wished the BBC would have produced more adventures with Four and Sarah, and because they have not, here is my non-official contribution._

 _Please note that the story was originally separated into six Episodes (although Episode 6 is more of an Epilogue only), but further divided into chapters due to the format on this website._

* * *

==== ==== EPISODE 1 ==== ====

Marbarett, one of the largest cities on the planet of Skania in the belt of Abraxas, some fifteen thousands years in the future. Probably. You know, it was a ' _slight overshoot'_ of the Doctor that got them there. Having started off as an Earth colony but developed far from its origins ever since, Marbarett was quite an unusual place. The city consisted of many narrow passages and corridors winding down a mountain with a slowly decreasing slope in the same fashion one could imagine streams of water running into a valley. Overshadowing these passages were thousands of small houses with hexagonal or octagonal layouts, usually one, but sometimes two stories high. Their walls were made of an alabaster-like stone that had a glossy shimmer to it, almost as if the last rain shower had never happened more than a few minutes ago. But the prettiest thing about the city were the flat roofs which adorned the little houses. Being made from a semi-transparent, coloured, glass-like material, they allowed the light of the planet's two suns to project the different colours of different roofs onto the streets. The more the roofs hung over the houses and the narrower the road they stood in, the more the colours blended into each other on the pavement. Walking through the streets felt a lot like walking down an avenue with trees left and right, where only patches of light would touched your skin, but it was many times more of a spectacle thanks to the varying colours.

Of course, for the Skanish – as the people of the planet were called – this was all everyday business and if they wanted to see something more impressive, they had to visit one of the local sights. One of these was the Intercontinental Gallery of Skanish Arts that sat near the heart of the city in a building which occupied only slightly more ground than the rest, but consisted of at least four floors, underground ones not counted. Contained within was an exhibition of the most popular paintings and sculptures – as regarded by the inhabitants of this planet – and what they liked was similar in style to Earth's expressionism, although lots of their works would have easily made a Jackson Pollock look poor.

Leading up to the gallery – or from it, depending on your point of view – was a very wide staircase that bent down onto a square in a flat arch. Amongst the many and different looking people walking up and down was a dark-haired, slender Earth woman wearing 70's flared trousers and a white blouse. She was stumbling down the rapidly decreasing stairs rather than she was walking, trying hard to catch up with her personal tour guide of the universe. Who, as usual, was three steps ahead and striding along with great confidence. The Doctor, and his best companion, Sarah Jane.

"Say, Doctor…!" Although she tried to make her voice sound casually, she had to raise it a bit to be heard across the people and the distance between them. "That sculpture back in the gallery. The big, tangled, ball of wool, tree thing, or whatever it was..." Thankfully the Doctor seemed to have heard her and slowed down, which allowed her get close enough to talk at her regular volume. "Do you have any idea what that was supposed to be?", Sarah finally asked the question that was on her mind. If only she had the words to describe the sculpture she was talking of, but she really had never seen anything this strange. And having travelled with the Doctor for a while, that was quite a statement.

"Hm? What was what supposed to be?"

Sarah took the first chance to get back to his side when he stopped for a short moment and looked over his shoulder to find out where she was. A bit scatter-brained, as usual, he checked the wrong shoulder first, missing Sarah, but finally caught sight of her after turning around again.

Just in time for him to see the young woman mimicking twisted tree branches with her arms. No way she could make it look like the sculpture, but she didn't feel like trying herself at another description. "You know, the..." Instead of using a word she merely used a whistling sound.

"Ah, that one.", his face lit up briefly as though he knew what she was referring to. Maybe he did, maybe he thought of something else. Maybe it did not really matter. "Not quite, no.", he replied after a second or so of pondering, "Although I thought it looked a bit like the central intelligence mainframe on Zerberus two..."

Leaving both of them to that thought for a bit, he continued walking down the stairs and onto the square, with Sarah now remaining at his side.

"They call it explorationism, you know. The idea is that one might find inspiration in the abstract figures. Find something no one's ever seen before..." The Doctor explained.

Sarah frowned a bit, not really sure whether she liked Skanish' art or not. "Well, they still got me racking my brain about it, that's for sure...", she commented eventually, but quietly, too.

As they kept walking they slowly made their way through the narrow corridors to where the TARDIS had landed. How the Doctor was able to find back to it, despite his usual lack of orientation, she did not know. The people passing them by in the streets were of all kinds of species, mostly humanoid, but still quite different in skin, stature, number of limbs or otherwise. Supposedly, the planets in the belt of Abraxas formed a federation, so that everyone was welcome to visit and trade. Honestly however, Sarah tried not to think about what would happen if she would get lost in one of these streets, stranded all by herself among all kinds of strange creatures. Of course, she would most likely be able to hang about for a while – knowing that this was a civilised community – but she really preferred to know the Doctor close if possible.

"Honestly, I think I prefer Earth's art.", the Doctor rambled on after a little while; Art still the subject of their conversation. "Humans have such a way to express ever something more to their reality when they attempt to capture it..."

Sarah smiled. It seemed such a typical thing for him to say, with humans being his favourite species in the universe and all. "You mean, like how the Mona Lisa's smile is supposed to have a certain magical quality?", she wondered aloud.

He stopped quite abruptly and turned to the young woman with a grin on his face. "Exactly! Like the Mona Lisa!", he praised her for the good example. "I dare even say it's one of the prettiest paintings in the universe!"

That was quite a statement to make, wasn't it? Sarah raised her eyebrows at him. "Is that so?", she asked, purely rhetorical and was still smiling back at him. "I never saw it in real, only ever in photographs...", she admitted.

The Doctor's face suddenly showed a disappointed expression. "That's an absolute pity, Sarah!", he exclaimed. "You must remind me to set the coordinates for Paris when we get back." Having said that, the tall man quickly turned around and continued to walk towards the out-of-place looking, blue box in the distance.

Secretly, Sarah would be glad enough to make it to any place on Earth next time. But then again, she had this terrible feeling that she was only imagining wanting to go home when really she was afraid to think of a time when she and the Doctor would part ways for good. No, she couldn't think of that. That would not happen, not any time soon!

"Here I go dragging you around the universe when you've barely seen the wonders of your own planet...", she heard the Doctor talk partly to himself, partly to her.

Although he had not technically asked for a response, Sarah still took the chance to comment on that fact.

"I am barely a quarter of a century old, after all..."

"So young, still...", he said, a sigh in his voice, and without as much as a short glance into her face.

Since he wasn't looking, Sarah shook her head, thinking about how he could act so resigned when discussing the matter of age. For a human in his early forties, having a mid-life crisis was not unusual, but although he looked like it, he was not human. Of course she had no idea just how old Time Lords could get and whether he was right to consider himself _'old'_ already. For all she could guess, he might live forever as long as he wasn't shot or worse. Was it that long memory of his that seemed to plague him? Were there things he would rather forget about? There was no way she could tell. No human had ever had the chance to collect as much experience as a 750 year old time traveller from a distant planet…

As they continued walking, the TARDIS got ever closer. One of the colourful roofs above shone a red light on the box, tinting it actually rather purple than blue. They were still quite a few yards away when Sarah noticed another sound above the usual chit-chat in the streets. It was a bit like a buzzing that came and went in an irregular rhythm. She had to listen to it several times on their way to the TARDIS until she recognized the pattern. Sarah caught the Doctor's sleeve between her index finger and her thumb to gain his attention. "Doctor?"

He stopped and turned around almost immediately.

"What's that noise? It sounds like...", she wondered, "Is there a motorway nearby?"

The Doctor kept still for a couple of seconds and narrowed his eyes as he listened to the sound in the distance. "A motorway? No; Can't be!", he shrugged off her assumption. "The Skanish are using transmats for at least a century now, they don't need motorways..." Although he tried to teach her how things really were and showed the young woman a big, smart-aleck grin, his expression changed very soon.

"Ah!" Eyes widening with the sudden realization that had hit him, the Doctor ran away straight into the next passage that led downhill.

"Where are you going, Doctor?" When Sarah caught up to him, he stood looking out over the valley and pointed towards the end of the city. In the distance laid a huge, very complex racing circuit that led over greens, water and included big leaps through the air. From where they looked, Sarah could not even see the point from which the circuit started or the building complex where the vehicles could be kept. Naturally, she assumed that something like it had to exist.

The Doctor turned his gaze back at Sarah. "You were almost right.", he corrected himself.

"It's the annual intergalactic race of Abraxas!" His voice had that special ring to it that could make the simplest things sound incredibly fascinating.

"Is it exciting?", Sarah wanted to know.

"I've only ever been to a training session...", her friend revealed to her and shrugged. Or so he did at first, but then this excited look returned to his face. "Are you curious?"

"Yes, very much!" The young Earth woman nodded and then laughed when she saw the Doctor taking the lead once again and rushing off.

"Well, come on!"

 _It's the benefit of owning a time machine_ , she thought there for a moment. It didn't really matter much if they stayed longer on Skania, they could still be back without her friends or family ever noticing. Not that they were on a tight schedule back on Earth, but she liked to think that at home, everything was still waiting for her and that nothing – or not much – would have changed on her return.

Together, Sarah-Jane and the Doctor made their way through an increasing amount of people, going downhill to the building complex where the public could access the racing site. This complex set around an artificial bay in a half circle and the bits she could see of it became more clearly visible as they came closer to the foot of the mountain. From the distance, while they were still up high enough to overlook the circuit, Sarah could even spot a vehicle of some sorts chasing about the track sometimes. At some point, however, they got too low and the entirety of the track vanished behind the Colosseum-like public entrance, racing management and team boxes. There was a hustle and bustle going on in front of the building complex and although Sarah's attention was drawn away constantly by the people passing by, she somehow managed not to lose sight of the Doctor. He went and moved away from the main crowd that forced its way in and out of the building and stopped where it seemed a bit calmer, waiting until Sarah was close enough again to have a conversation at a pleasant volume.

"There's no way we can get tickets after race start, but lucky for us I left on good terms with the team of Gabbo Beta last time.", he casually told his companion. "Or maybe I am going to leave on good terms with them. Let's hope for the first."

Sarah looked around before she understood what he was getting at. There was a door reading _'staff only'_ nearby.

"Are we taking the back entrance?"

The Doctor didn't reply, just smiled back and produced the sonic screwdriver out of his coat sleeve like a magician. When he went away – to unlock the door, presumably – Sarah looked back at the crowd that stood gathered in front of the main entrance. She really did not fancy waiting in line and knowing the Doctor as well as she did, he most likely was more interested in the technological aspect of the spectacle anyway, and thus, the crew area. So the team boxes were the right place to start. But just as Sarah meant to turn around and follow in the Doctor's path she noticed something that forced her to stand still and stare. There was a movement in the crowd, a single person forcing their way out of the building, running away and pushing others aside to do so. Usually, that alone would not have been enough to hold her attention for long, but that person she saw was much too familiar to her to be true. It was a young woman. Short, with dark brown hair, wearing a blouse and flares just like the ones Sarah had picked this morning. There was no way she could be certain with all that distance and the crowd of people between them, but if her first guess was right then she had just seen herself running out of that building.

"Ah, Doctor…?" She had to pry her eyes away from the spot in the crowd where she thought she had seen herself, but as she looked around to ask the Doctor about it, he was gone. Of course he was, he had left earlier! "Doctor? Doctor!" Sarah called out, when she failed to spot him near the 'staff only' door. There was a rush of adrenaline in her veins when the thought occurred to her that she might just have lost him. She should have known better than to allow herself to get distracted like that. And now, what? Her eyes still kept searching the mass of people. _'Come on'_ , she thought. _'How difficult could be to find a six foot_ _four_ _guy with_ _a_ _hat_ _and_ _a_ _scarf_ _?'_


	2. Thermal Coupling For Beginners (Ep1)

"Sarah? What's keeping you?"

She almost jumped as she turned around and suddenly stared the Doctor into the face. But even though his sudden reappearance had startled her, she let out a sigh of relief, happy to know that he was still nearby. "Doctor…! I thought I saw someone...", Sarah tried to tell him, "I thought I've seen myself among that crowd."

The Doctor took a step forward and looked out over the ever moving mass of people streaming in and out of the building. "...Really? Over there?", he asked.

But he could look as far and wide as he wanted, the other girl was long gone.

"She's not there anymore. She had been in quite a hurry to get away.", Sarah explained with a voice that was getting quieter as she spoke, "But I'm sure she was wearing just the same clothes..." Technically, she could have been mistaken, and the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her that it must have been just her imagination. It felt very strange, still...

When Sarah went quiet, the Doctor turned to her with a toothy smile on his face. "Maybe you've got the same tailor, then, hm?", he joked. It was not a very good joke, but it did lift Sarah's mind off the confusion for a bit. Even though a surprising amount of coincidences seemed to follow the Doctor around, coincidences still were a possibility. And now that she had his reassurance, the odd feeling seemed to disappear from Sarah's mind. She had been mistaken, all right. It happened.

"Well, never mind that for now. There's little chance of finding her again in this turmoil, anyway.", the Doctor reminded her and then nodded into the general direction of the staff entrance as he invited the young woman to follow him. "Come, I've just gotten us two backstage passes!"

With a smile Sarah finally managed to turn away from the crowd in front of the building complex.

"Right!", she exclaimed and soon followed into the Doctor's steady steps.

They strode into the team's area almost naturally, although they rather obviously did not belong there. Most of the other people running about the place were dressed in colourful clothes showing the logos of their sponsors, team names or place of origin. Everyone was in a hurry, carrying spare parts of vehicles or shouting instructions into communication devices. Oddly enough, one might expect all kinds of languages to be heard, but everything sounded like common English to Sarah, maybe with a few different accents here and there.

Each of the garages opened up to a road that joined the racing track somewhere in the distance and in some of them mechanics in overalls were working on their vehicles. These cars – if they could be called such – looked mostly like small jet fighters, except that their design was rather edgy, their wings kept short and altogether they were much smaller than a jet plane from 20th century Earth. The passenger cabin allowed for two people to sit side by side and shielded them from the tough head winds with a large windscreen which stretched over the pilots' heads. Instead of wheels the vehicles sat on landing stilts as long as they remained still, but as Sarah and the Doctor walked through the hallway passing all of the teams by, she caught a glimpse of one of the vehicles moving. Apparently they used a sort of air cushion to manoeuvre in short distance to the ground. In fact, Sarah began to think that the hovercraft the Doctor once owned used to look quite a bit like these…

That was probably why, at this point, she would not have been surprised to see the cars fly or float on water. For a second there she was reminded of how much her time travelling friend used to like vehicles and gadgets. Bessie alone had been enough proof of that. But his latest incarnation seemed to have lost interest in the topic altogether. Well, maybe not entirely, or else they wouldn't be here, right?

Sarah did not get around to finish that line of thought when suddenly there was a loud hissing noise coming out of one of the boxes up ahead and white smoke draught into the hallway. The Doctor stopped abruptly and held out an arm to keep Sarah from walking past him by accident.

" **COOL IT DOWN** **!"** , someone shouted at the top of their lungs, "Cool it down now!"

"Uh oh… that doesn't sound too good.", the Doctor stated what must have gone through both of their minds. When some of the white smoke dispersed in the hallway, the air gained an unpleasant, stinging smell and the temperature dropped by a bit. Instinctively, Sarah tried not to breathe until it had passed, but ever more clouds kept coming from the garage.

Nevertheless, the Doctor suddenly ran forward into the smoke, straight towards the source of the hissing and shouting of voices. Realizing that there must be someone in need of help, Sarah chased after her friend immediately. For a second or so, everything went white before her eyes and the air became so cold that it was difficult not to keep blinking. Thankfully, the Doctor was walking ahead and divided the oncoming smoke with his hat, paving a way for Sarah to follow in.

And then, all of a sudden, they stepped out of the draught into a garage, and the white cloud of cooling gas went straight past them. There was a vehicle sitting halfway in, halfway out of the room. It was resting on its landing stilts although a stream of hot air was still coming from below, suggesting that the engine was still running. Two mechanics were treating the open heart of the machine with what had to be futuristic looking fire extinguishers. A pilot as well as a co-pilot sat inside of the vehicle and looked out of the propped up windscreen, waiting nervously for the mechanics to bring the vehicle back down to an operating temperature.

"Is it going to hold for another round?", asked a short-haired man who wore something resembling a shirt with a curious yellow and greenish diamond pattern on it. He looked a sort of management type; being in absolute distress about the state the vehicle was in despite being also much too cautious to approach the sizzling monster.

One of the two mechanics, a slender woman with a ponytail and a scar on her forehead, responded to that question while at the same time, she put away the fire extinguisher and went to get a canister filled with what looked like bubbling acid. "There's no way to tell; Let's hope for the best!"

The entirety of the conversation was held at a high volume and Sarah strongly felt the stress these people were in even though she was not involved at all… yet. The Doctor however, was quick to join everyone huddled around the steaming engine. Funnily enough, everyone was so busy with the fault of the vehicle that no one seemed to notice the stranger examining the damage.

"Cooling acid!", shouted the other mechanic now. The bald headed man gave a last blast with the fire extinguisher and then held out a hand for his colleague to place the handle of the canister into.

When the last trails of the cooling gas had dispersed, even the mechanic had to finally notice the Doctor leaning curiously over the engine. "No, wait!", the Time Lord ordered the man and grabbed at the hand that pulled up the cooling acid to stop him from pouring it into a tank.

The man's jaw fell open now that he was forced to look up and see the stranger who had stopped him in the middle of his work. "What-? Who are you?", he demanded to know, and as if on command, Sarah felt everyone's eyes resting on her and her friend now. That important looking management guy was raising the right question as he asked "Who let these two get in here?" - but unfortunately for him, he remained unnoticed.

The Doctor gave a quick nod in the direction of his Earth companion, a smile appearing briefly on his face at the same time. "I'm the Doctor; This is Sarah; We're helping.", he said; One of the shortest explanations Sarah had heard from him so far and he never seemed to run out of ideas on how to answer the ever same questions. Being done with introductions so quickly, the Doctor let go of the mechanic's arm and reached into the engine space himself – but retracted his hand soon again after burning his finger tips on something.

"Now! Here's the thing about pentalion-driven fuel injection engines running without a proper cooling cycle..." Despite having suffered some stings from accessing the wrong engine components, the Doctor did not hesitate to reach into the overheated mechanical parts again, and again, until by the third time he found whatever he needed to get hold off. "If you allow your thermal converter to pass the heat all the way to the compression unit and set the coupling to 4-2-0..." He reached down further, shutting an eye as his face neared the red hot metal and Sarah stepped closer to him. Although she had faith in his skills she still was a bit afraid he could get himself hurt. Besides, it seemed there was not much else she could do at the moment...

Then, however, there was the sound of a switch flipped, or maybe some clamps snapping into place, and the engine suddenly let out fresh air to hover on, almost like a sigh of relief.

"The engine's back at a 100% efficiency level, maybe more! It's at maximum peak!", exclaimed the pilot after he had read his dials again.

"...you can convert it into additional energy.", concluded the Doctor and pulled back from the engine's insides with an unconnected cable in hand. Without any spoken instructions he held it over to Sarah who grabbed the cable so it wouldn't drop back into the engine while the Doctor rerouted the remaining wire connections on the top of the machine. The Earth woman watched closely how he detached and reattached everything and when it seemed that only one socket remained empty, she reached the cable back into the Doctor's hand. By now, it didn't require a look, and even less a word for them to work together like this.

Although the Doctor seemed to be very concentrated on what he was doing, he grinned for a moment before finally finishing his explanation. "Of course, the solution is only temporary.", he said, "You will have to deal with a slight increase in fuel consumption. But I think you will find it runs considerably better as long as it is kept running." He patted the vehicle when he was finished with the adjustments, and shot a short glance over to Sarah before his attention was drawn back to the team's crew.

The bald mechanic stared at the Doctor with eyes of disbelief before something seemed to click in his mind. "Of course! The thermodynamic expansion of pentalion… That's absolutely feasible at this point!", he eventually exclaimed, impressed, and hastily waved for his colleague. "Bring in some more fuel!"

But when the other woman turned and went to fetch a pipeline from a large tank outside, the leader of the crew stepped in between her and the vehicle. He glared at the Doctor suspiciously. "Wait a flipping second!", he held the two parties apart and demanded more answers. "What if the engine is not kept running, what happens then?"

"Oh…" The Doctor looked a bit perplexed at the man's sudden suspicion against him, but remained as calm as ever. He rubbed the side of his nose as he answered, with a bit of lowliness to his voice, too: "Well, you will lose your thermal converter, the compression seals and your cycle scheduling control. But you see, the thermal converter was pretty much beyond repair already, anyway..."

Sarah also noticed how he cocked his head to one side; Something he usually did when he was looking for understanding. And that he would need if his so-called repairs were really about to do this much damage to the machine. As her gaze went back to the team leader, she saw the man almost break a sweat trying to make a decision. He looked left and right to his two mechanics, who seemed quite agreeable with the Doctor's solution, then to another team member sitting in front of several screens further in the back, who seemingly had no idea what was going on, and to the two pilots.

The team leader stepped closer to the passenger cabin. "Will you be able to drive like this?", he asked the main pilot and got both a shrug and a nod in return. In fact, it appeared to Sarah that it was only the team leader who had a tough time to trust that the Doctor's temporary repairs would yield more advantages than disadvantages. But now that the whole of the team had given their approval, he finally gave in, too. "All right! I'll take what I can get…", he decided with a nervous sigh and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, before he finally gave way for the mechanic to refuel the car. It didn't take long, and the very second she was done with it, the team leader stepped forward again, this time pointing out of the garage and shouting instructions to his pilots. "Get out there and make the most of that round! And don't you dare break down now!"

The main pilot revved up the engine, which caused the machine to give off a stronger stream of air. Had the air not been well directed underneath the vehicle, it probably would have knocked Sarah off her feet with ease. As the landing stilts retracted, the mechanics stepped close to the machine to push it backwards out of the garage. The Doctor, and Sarah shortly afterwards, too, helped them. Although the car was fairly loud and looked fairly heavy, too, it glided surprisingly easy and was not difficult to manoeuvre by hand at all.

As soon as the vehicle was far enough out of the garage, the pilots took off immediately. There was a bright blue light flashing up in the big, triangular exhaust pipes flanking the left and right of the huge fan which sat at the back of the car.


	3. Of Sabotage And World Domination (Ep1)

Sarah and the Doctor stood for another few seconds and watched them leave the garage area of the racing track before they walked back inside. The crew did not care much for them and were already on the way to return to their work stations. But before all of them could get away, the Doctor locked sight with the team leader and restarted the conversation. "Team Gabbo Beta, aren't you?", the Time Lord asked.

"Gabbo Beta Racing Team One.", replied the short, black-haired man and patted a sewed on patch on his shirt. It showed the letters _'GB1'_ in a fancy font, and the team's colours: red, blue and black. As he continued to speak, the team leader walked back and forth through the garage. "I'm Robin Banks, and this year, this enterprise is my responsibility… unfortunately." He finished the sentence with a shrug of helplessness.

"Tell me, how come the outer shell of your thermal converter gets split in half?", The Doctor demanded to know from anyone in this garage who was willing to answer. His addition however, suggested that he had his own suspicions already. "It takes more than wear to yield this kind of damage..."

"That's because it was deliberate damage.", explained the mechanic as he moved his equipment around the room, and his female colleague quickly concluded: "Sabotage!" Her tone however, seemed a lot more upset than his and she went straight back to reorganizing the team's spare parts. At the same time, the senior mechanic took a short break from his doing to pass by the Doctor and Sarah and greeted them with a swift gesture over his chest before he held out a hand for shaking. "Markus Rupp.", he introduced himself, and his colleague, too, while he was at it. "This is Inis Mora."

First Sarah, and then the Doctor, shook the mechanic's hand. Although there was a frown on the Time Lords face instead of a friendly smile. He seemed to be still thinking about the damage to the engine.

"Hm. Yes, I thought it was deliberate...", he agreed to the mechanics' assumption of sabotage.

While still running up and down in the room, the team leader rejoined the conversation, even though it seemed as if his attention was shifting all the time. "We've had a streak of winnings for three years in a row, and now this. I anticipated **s** _ **ome envy**_ , but never _**sabotage**_!", Robin explained, probably dropping their victories into that sentence by intention. "There is not a single case of sabotage in the entire history of the annual intergalactic races!"

When Robin was pacing away from them again, the Doctor slightly corrected his statement.

"Maybe there's not a single _recorded_ case of sabotage in the history of the annual intergalactic races...", he suggested.

His notion, however, was left unnoticed. "Anyway, we've already lost plenty of valuable time due to the overheating engine running at a low capacity only.", the team leader waved the suggestion aside and wandered over to the other man sitting in the back of the room. "Terry, how's it looking?"

Terry was an older looking man who sat in front of a rather impressive collection of screens that read all sorts of statistics and showed their racing vehicle as it drove around the track from almost every angle possible, as well as a detailed map of the terrain. If Sarah had to guess at his role description, she would have said he was something like a navigator.

"Pretty impressive start so far. If he keeps it up, we might be able to make up for the time lost. Maybe even qualify for a spot at pole position.", he replied without bothering to turn his head or to take off the headset he was wearing.

Banks turned back to the Doctor and Sarah with a frown on his face, seemingly conflicted about what to do about the sabotage. "At any other time, I would get the racing committee involved, but the last thing I need at the moment is half a dozen of investigators slowing down our operations.", he complained openly.

"This doesn't require an investigation if you ask me.", Inis commented sharply, her voice brimming with suppressed anger. "We all know it has something to do with these scoundrels from Ibrimaxus…!" Her open display of hostility fetched her a short remark by her older colleague. " _ **I**_ _ **n**_ _ **is**_ …!" Although she seemed very convinced by her suspicion, when Markus shushed her, she didn't say anything else. Probably because, just as the team leader had mentioned, there was not really the time for them to get invested into this problem while they had to win a race with a barely working machine.

The female mechanic's assumption, however, got the Doctor thinking.

"Ah, Ibrimaxus in the 150th century…", he pondered aloud, "I don't intend to support any prejudices, but I see what you mean..."

Being left as the only one in the room who did not understand what they all meant, Sarah was forced to turn to the Doctor for answers. "What does she mean..?", she wanted to know.

"The Ibrimaxians are provoking a war with the next solar system outside of the Abraxas federation.", her tall friend told her, but wore a somewhat worried expression on his face as he did. "What holds them back at the moment is their disadvantage in weapons, and the most advanced weapon technology available in this century utilises a crystalline mineral ore named Etabonite. It is considered so dangerous that enrichment, trade and use of the mineral is strictly forbidden by the federation unless it's for very special occasions."

"And what does that have to do with a racing competition..?", the Earth woman wondered. Just because their planet was preparing for war did not imply any relation to a regular sports event.

"The trophy for the first place contains a large amount of the crystal for purely – and most unnecessary – aesthetic purpose.", he explained the connection, not entirely without a bit of criticism and then looked at Sarah with an expectant gaze when he left his next sentence for her to finish. "So, the only way to acquire Etabonite by legal means..."

"… is to win the race.", Sarah figured quickly. "And by the time they decide to use it, it'll be too late for the law to act!" Until the very moment they would fire the first shot using that material, their own law would give the rest of the federation no rights on which to revoke the trophy.

"Exactly.", the Doctor agreed with a brief smile that was easily alleviated by the final conclusion to their reasoning. "It could set off a chain reaction, and plunge the entire belt of Abraxas into war. All members of the federation are bound to help when a single planet is under attack, you know?"

That reminded Sarah too much of the World War I prelude; She knew exactly how this could go and was, unsurprisingly, quite worried with that thought on her mind now. "Sounds like they've got a powder keg there...", she added quietly to the conversation, but the Doctor had heard her and agreed. "Hmhm..."

He still stood facing Sarah when he suddenly turned his head and addressed the team leader of GB1.

"Banks! Why don't you let us investigate the sabotage?", he suggested with a new, wide grin on his face. "I dare say the two of us are much more handy than a team of authorized investigators." He leant slightly towards Sarah as if to make sure she remained deeply involved in the matter.

Mr. Banks looked at them with quite the amount of surprise in his expression. "You two?", he wondered aloud and laughed at the Doctor's offer, "Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for any help – but what kind of qualification have you got?"

As usual when he was asked this question, the Time Lord shrugged and thought of something humble to answer.

"Well, I'm a travelling scientist of sorts, and Sarah is an investigative journalist..." He looked over to his companion. "Is that about right..?", he asked her as though he had forgotten where she had come from.

"I sure hope so!", Sarah smiled at him. Depending on when they made it back to Earth, her agency might have fired her already, but that didn't matter much, because as a journalist she could easily change her publisher or just work as a freelancer, if necessary.

Wearing still the same broad smile, she turned back to Robin Banks. "We would be glad to help in any way we can!", she assured him.

"Especially so if it prevents a cross-galaxy war...", added the Doctor quickly, but the look in his eyes had become stern as he emphasised on the dangerous intergalactic situation.

The GB1 team leader laughed, but it was the desperate laugh of a man who was asked too much of. "You're right.", he responded. "It's yet another reason why we have to win. As if there wasn't enough going on already..." Sarah watched the man pace back and forth again, presumably reconsidering their offer of assistance. Maybe he was about to ask why they were so willing to help and what their gain was in all this. Then again, the Doctor had proven his good will earlier already. After a mere few seconds of thinking about it, Mr. Banks turned back to look at the two travellers with a scrutinising eye. Judging by how fast he made up his mind, it seemed that he mostly wanted to be done with the topic as quickly as possible. "You're not actually allowed back here, are you?", he guessed first, but continued before the Doctor could come up with an explanation. "Fine, I can get you some authorized crew passes, but you will have to do the rest by yourself." Robin surprisingly announced, albeit in a patronizing tone. "Don't expect a guided tour from me!"

Well, maybe they had not gotten the friendliest tone they had hoped for, but at least they were allowed to help.

Sarah looked up to the Doctor and he looked back at her, shrugging with an almost comical expression on his face.

"It's a start.", he just said.

And indeed, it was; The start of a new adventure. Barely a minute later the Time Lord and his best companion were walking through the hallway of the crew area again, this time on their way to the box of the Ibrimaxus' team. They were still no real investigators, but Sarah enjoyed acting as the helper to her Sherlock Holmes. Doctor Sherlock Holmes. She wondered if he would think it funny if someone called him that. So she did.

"So, Doctor Holmes, what are we looking for?", Sarah asked.

While walking, he turned to her with a smile on his face. She had guessed right; He thought it was funny.

"There's not a whole lot which can cut through asomorphic alloy, Miss Watson.", the Doctor explained, playing along with her little joke. "But I think the most likely thing we can find around here should be a sonic drill."

"Hm, something like your screwdriver, then, is it?", Sarah wondered.

"No, it's more like a drill, actually.", he corrected her, and stopped unexpectedly to figure out which way they actually had to go. "...and a lot more powerful than my little tool..." After another few seconds of orienting himself, he pointed Sarah into the direction of a team's garage they had already passed. "Over there!"

Making their way back again, the duo finally entered the garage in view. And… the first impression Sarah got was not a good one. The colours this team used were a set of dimmed greens, like khaki and swamp weeds. But she might have forgiven the poor choice of colouring had not the garage looked run down, slightly in shambles. All the tools, desks, chairs and electronic equipment seemed badly taken care of, dirty and placed around the room with little care. Sarah would have noted how well organized the Gabbo Beta One team was, had she not taken it for granted. Out of all the things in the garage there was just one thing that looked brand-new, almost untouched. Surprisingly, it was the team's own vehicle which rested near the closed garage gate. The team members could not be bothered trying to make adjustments or repairs – maybe because two of them were fighting with each other. Not just verbally, but they were pushing each other around, also. It was the kind of fight that did not seem dangerous, though. It was more like watching two family members test their strength against each other.

Two more crew members sat in front of the statistics screens and as Sarah and the Doctor neared, one of them stood up.

"Hello!", the Doctor greeted them in the same cheerful, absolutely prejudice-free tone as he greeted everyone.


	4. Sarah Commits The Unthinkable (Ep1)

The man that walked up to them was human in appearance for the most part, except that his skin was partly covered in thick, black scales and his eyes had a stinging yellow colour. Upon taking a second look, Sarah found that the whole crew was of the same kind. Something about that man made her want to go into hiding behind the Doctor's tall figure. It was not the fact that he was different in look than humans, at least that was not the only reason. There was a certain hostile expression on his face. Something that seemed to tell her that she had come to the wrong place at the wrong time way before he actually had to say it.

"Who are you?", the strange Ibrimaxian demanded to know, but took a guess right away. "Tourists, eh?" There was a sharp sub tone to his voice that could hardly be missed.

"Quite the contrary.", the Doctor responded, still smiling and reached into his coat pocket to produce the pass Robin Banks had given him earlier. "We're officials."

Since Sarah had also been given a pass, she showed them hers as well, but the otherworldly stranger remained unimpressed.

"Crew's visitor passes. Pah!" The man responded with a mood that just seemed to get worse by the second. "What do you want?", he demanded to know, "Espionage?"

The Doctor kept acting humble and friendly, not upset by the hostility in the slightest.

"No, not at all. We're just trying to get in touch with the other teams."

"Cross Ibrimaxus off your list then, you're done here." The scaled man waved them aside, turned around and walked away casually. He seemingly expected that Sarah and the Doctor had gotten the hint and would not dare to waste any more of his time. But, obviously, he had no idea just who he was dealing with and what they really had come here for. Sarah had been taught better in her career as an investigate journalist than to leave without answers.

Plucking up her courage, she stepped forward and spoke, tried to start the conversation over and to get straight to the point this time. "Actually, we were wondering...", she began, but then the stranger turned back around and glared at her. Although she usually was not one to falter at the first sight of danger, the violent look in his eye made her lose track of her sentence for a moment.

Thankfully, the Doctor continued just where she had left off, and without as much as two seconds delay.

"...if you are taking part in this race to win your kind a means for war?"

When Sarah glanced over to her friend, she noticed that he had dropped his smile and was being quite serious now.

In exchange, the stranger was now smiling. It was a dangerous smile formed with sharp teeth and Sarah was not sure whether it was a good thing or a bad omen that he had lost at least two of them already.

"Assuming we would – and that's a very rude assumption, by the way -", he replied, "We would never tell you about it, would we?"

The fact that it was non definitive, but highly suggestive answer made Sarah want to stubbornly keep asking about it. But she also felt that this was a difficult situation, where one false move could turn this unpleasant company into a real bad company.

"Never hurts to ask.", said the Doctor, showing a sort of understanding to why he could not get the answer he wanted. But now that he had managed to engage in a conversation, he tried to get more information out of the team members.

"By the way, that's a very small team you've got there. I see two mechanics, two pilots – you're the main pilot, I assume – but what about your team's manager, navigator?"

The Doctor was absolutely right; The team seemed rather small. Somehow, Sarah had assumed that the other members simply were not around at the moment, but with the qualifications going on outside and the race almost about to start, shouldn't everyone be at their stations?

The Ibrimaxian pilot chuckled in response to the Doctor's question. "Our team manager is a master at navigation as well. In fact, he is a master of many things…", he mysteriously explained. "He shows up every once in a while, don't you worry about him..."

"Well, I'm not really worried, just wondering..."

This time, Sarah's friend did not continue his questioning right away. She noticed him furrowing his brows and pondering for a little bit. By the time he attempted to get back into the conversation, his mood had changed back to a casual attitude again. "Say, do you-"

The scaled pilot cut him off mid-sentence.

"I'm getting rather tired of your questions, tourist.", he warned the Doctor with a glare, but the Time Lord didn't acknowledge the threat at all.

"Just one more question;", he said. "Do you happen to own a sonic drill?"

Aha! There they were back on track again. Sarah noticed the expression of the pilot changing to a reserved look. She was awaiting his reply with high expectations to some kind of clue, but just as the other wanted to speak, their conversation was very suddenly interrupted.

"Doctor!", called a voice that was already familiar to them. It was the GB1 senior mechanic, Markus Rupp, who peeked into the garage. "Can I speak to you for a moment?", he asked the Doctor, but seemed very uncomfortable under the eyes of the Ibrimaxian crew. Whatever he wanted to tell the Time Lord, it seemed important, and not to be heard by their competitors.

Honestly, however, the Ibrimaxian main pilot did not appear to be interested in the Earth colonist in the slightest.

"A sonic drill? What good is that kind of information to you?", he just asked in return, almost as if the interruption had not occurred at all.

"Hold that thought – I'll get right back to you.", the Doctor told the scaled man and gestured him to wait. He turned towards Markus, who stood at the open garage entrance and it looked at first as if he was about to walk towards him. Instead, however, he stopped next to Sarah with his back turned to the Ibrimaxians. "Sarah, tell me…", he whispered to her. "Am I the only one getting an unpleasant feeling from them…?"

"No, Doctor…" the young Earth woman shook her head to underline that she agreed with him completely. "I'm thinking that Inis might have been right to call them scoundrels. They don't look like a proper racing team at all!" In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she had the feeling that this team consisted of former prisoners, or hired hands, maybe. But people with expertise in racing gave a different impression, surely.

"Yes..." His gaze drifted further away and he was looking worried again. Telltale signs that he was on the same page as Sarah. He did not look at her, but he touched her shoulder lightly when he instructed her with the following. "Keep an eye on them while I talk to Markus, okay?"

"If you say so..."

Needless to say, she did not feel well with the task. But even though she did not like it, she could hold her ground for a while, maybe even make some progress in their investigation. Hopefully, anyway.

When the Doctor eventually walked past and joined Markus at the door, they disappeared together into the hallway and out of Sarah's field of view.

Maybe she had a little underestimated how uncomfortable it felt to be left alone with a gang of brutish looking, large, black-scaled men. Or so she thought when she finally dragged her own eyes away from the garage entrance and back towards the crew. By now, the two mechanics had stopped fighting. She was not sure if she liked that they had found time to pay attention to her now, too. The main pilot looked at her in a suspicious way that slowly changed and turned out to be accompanied by a malicious smile.

Sarah smiled back, putting as much confidence in her expression as she could. If he meant to frighten her, he would have to try much harder. "So… about that sonic drill..." Although she was a bit at a loss of words, she tried her best to get back into the conversation where the Doctor had left off – still hoping to get that answer, that clue to the sabotage they had come here for.

But as she took the next breath to continue, a strange smell entered her lungs. There wasn't much time for her to think about it and wonder if she ever had smelled something like it, when suddenly Sarah felt the power drained from her body at an alarming speed. Her sight went blurred, and pure adrenaline flooded her veins when she realized that something was wrong, very wrong. She struggled to remain on her feet and even tried to turn around; To get away, get out of here. But when she opened her mouth to call the Doctor for help, someone had appeared at her back and grabbed her. The same person covered her mouth with a hand just before she could get a sound out. Not that she would have had the power to call very loudly, since she felt so weak already. Most likely her voice would have been but more than a whisper, anyway. She collapsed to the floor like a figure made of jelly just before her eyes gave out completely and a total blackness fell over her mind like a blanket, suppressing every thought that had remained.

==== ==== The Doctor ==== ====

It could not have been more than a minute later when the Doctor returned to the Ibrimaxus team garage. He strode in one, two steps and then stopped abruptly. When his sight fell on the situation before him, his eyes grew wide and he opened his mouth, gasping for air.

"Sarah…!"

His dear companion stood facing the Ibrimaxians in an aggressive stance. Her right hand clenched around the handle of a Skanish high-energy laser pistol with a knife attachment and pointed at the chest of the team's main pilot. The gaze fixed straight at the target before her, the short woman did not even turn her head when the Doctor addressed her.

"Sarah, what's going on? What happened?", he wanted to know and began to make his way towards her. Although the situation seemed tense he walked fast, probably hoping to be back at her side very soon, but then Sarah suddenly turned and aimed the weapon directly at him.

Even more shocked than before, her friend stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her in total disbelief. "Come on, Sarah, this is not what you want to do…!", the Doctor tried to reason with her. Sarah was not one to pick up a weapon and even if she did, she would never harm anyone. Even less her very own best friend. But the look in her eye was quite serious and unwavering, despite his attempts to appeal to the woman he knew.

Sarah continued to hold him at gunpoint for a while longer and as the Doctor kept staring into her eyes it became obvious that seriousness was not the only emotion displayed in them. There was something else as well, but so vague it was not easy to tell whether it was sadness, guilt, regret, pain or a combination of them. Behind Sarah, one of the Ibrimaxian mechanics tried to sneak up on the Earth woman. With one glance past her the Doctor had noticed the ongoing attempt to disarm her, but when he focused back on Sarah, she suddenly turned around and pointed her firearm back at everyone around the garage. Effectively, the Ibrimaxian mechanic and his colleagues quickly retreated. The Doctor was about to try and get another step closer to his friend when she did something very curious: Sarah, although still threatening the mechanic, turned her head and looked into the Doctor's eyes. A frown appeared on her face with that subtle expression of sadness growing stronger as she spoke. "I'm sorry, so sorry.", was all that she uttered.

Before he had a chance to reply something or to ask her about it, she turned again and with a movement so definitive that it clearly seemed to happen out of her own accord she pointed the laser gun at the main pilot's right leg and pulled the trigger.

A bright flashing energy projectile shot out of the gun straight into the man's lower leg and he screamed in pain as he was hit. His colleagues all stepped back in fear when they saw him drop to a knee and clutch the bleeding, smouldering wound.

At the same time, the Doctor stood frozen in shock. There wasn't much that could make him forget to breathe, but watching Sarah-Jane shoot at a man and apologize for it was one of those things.

Only when Sarah abruptly turned on her heel and ran off, he snapped out of his mental paralysis.

"Sarah!", screaming her name, the Time Lord rushed after her out of the garage. The people in the hallway outside stood wondering and afraid of what had just happened, now that they all had heard a man scream. They easily made way for Sarah as she fled, but unfortunately, not quite as easily for the Doctor who was chasing after her now.

" **Out of my way!"** , he roared angrily and the path through the stream of people opened back up in front of him.

" **Sarah! SARAH!"**

She just wouldn't stop. The young woman kept running away and into a narrow passage splitting from the hallway to the left. Thankfully, the Doctor noticed her sudden turn in time and was quickly on the right track. He lost sight of her only for a short moment, seconds at most in the time she went around the corner until he had reached the passage. It was the way to one of many emergency exits out of the team area and leading back into the city of Marbarett, but Sarah had not made it outside yet. When the Doctor turned into the passage, he found Sarah kneeling on the floor and supporting her head with one hand. It seemed as if she had just collapsed…

==== ==== Sarah-Jane ==== ====

Her head felt terribly heavy when she came to. She was sitting on the floor, somewhere, with no idea how she got here. The last thing Sarah remembered was a strange smell, collapsing, and someone making sure she could not call for help. Her sight was still blurred, but she heard someone running towards her. Someone who was sliding the last few yards on the smooth floor before falling on his knees next to her. With a still hazy mind, Sarah smiled to herself. She knew only one person who could not resist to slide around corners in a chase; The Doctor. And it was him who wrapped an arm around her waist and tried to lift her back onto her feet. He called her name, but his voice seemed distant. Sarah still felt weak, but thankfully, her strength was returning to her quickly, so that with the help from her friend, she soon found she was capable of standing on her own feet again. By the time her sight returned to normal, she looked at the Doctor and found him to be in a state of mild shock. No word was spoken as she held onto his arm for support, but he stared at her with a mix of deep worry and disbelief, which added to the confusion she was already in. Not to mention that whenever she saw the Doctor worry, she knew that things had to be pretty bad and naturally, that always made her feel very uneasy, too.

"Doctor…? What is going on?", she asked him. "What happened?"

His expression did not light up. He was not even trying to act casual just for her sake.

He took her right hand by the wrist and brought it into Sarah's direct field of view. Only then she noticed how her hand held tightly some sort of gun with a sharp piece of metal attached to its top. Her eyes grew wide when she saw the weapon. How come she did not remember picking this up – not to mention that she couldn't think of any reason why she would ever reach for a weapon in the first place! But the worst was yet to come.

"You shot at a man.", told the Doctor to Sarah Jane.

Sarah gasped for air; She had almost forgotten to breathe.

"I don't-! I would never!", she stuttered. That was the immediate reaction of her brain, talking.

But she couldn't form a clear argument in time, even less explain how she had been knocked out and the Doctor was about to reply something – hopefully something comforting – when out of the blue, men in white uniforms came running into the side passage of the crew area. They were bearing guns that looked very similar to the one Sarah was holding and all of them were directed at the two confused travellers.

"Drop your weapon!", shouted the first of them that arrived. "Raise your hands!"

"You're under arrest for assault and sabotage!"

==== ==== END of EPISODE 1 ==== ====


	5. Leap Of Faith (Ep2)

==== ==== EPISODE 2 ==== ====

"Drop your weapon!"

Sarah and the Doctor suddenly found themselves facing three men in white uniforms who were blocking one way out of the corridor. These three men, all non-human in nature as visible by their pupil-less, silver eyes, were pointing highly advanced energy pistols at the two travellers. Quite obviously, they were going to be arrested once again. Except that for the first time, the authorities might actually have a reason to: The young woman had been caught holding a firearm and the Doctor had just told her that it had been fired recently. But such an object, a weapon, felt like a foreign body in Sarah's hand: She was disgusted at the thought of herself shooting at a man.

"Gladly!", the Earth woman shouted in reply to the order, in a tone that sounded so offended, almost insolent. She held the laser gun into the view of the security officer and then placed it on the ground – maybe a bit too fast than how she should do it, considering that a shot might be fired by accident – but luckily her oversight had no consequences. Sarah was just happy to finally get rid of the cursed weapon that had caused her to come under suspicion.

But apparently, the Doctor and she were still considered dangerous. "Raise your hands!", called the same one who had already given the first order. Judging by his demeanour, he had to be the one in charge.

Knowing all too well – from experience, that is – that resistance was usually not a good choice, the young woman did as told and raised both of her hands above her head. She was waiting for the Doctor to do the same, but he seemed rather hesitant to obey and lifted his hands only to the level of his shoulders. Most likely, he was getting very tired of doing this every time they got into trouble, or so Sarah thought. She would not blame him for it.

Only now the leading officer lowered his gun and reached for a small tool on his belt instead. "You're under arrest for assault and sabotage!", he informed the girl and the Doctor – something she still did not understand how it could have happened in the first place – and slowly walked up to them to take them into custody.

"I'm not a common scoundrel! I would never-!" Sarah tried to protest against her charge, despite knowing well that one of the officers would just tell her to be quiet and to accept her fate. But then, none of them actually got the chance to do so – as suddenly, the Doctor made a quick move.

He took a part of his multi-coloured scarf and whipped one of its ends with the fuzzy tassels into the leading officer's face. Completely taken by surprise, the man stumbled backwards and into the way of his colleagues who had a bad time trying to get an aim on the travellers, anyway, thanks to the corridor being so narrow. Before any of them had the chance to recover from the moment of surprise, the Doctor took Sarah by the wrist and ran the other way, dragging her with him quite forcefully. Honestly though; had he not, Sarah probably would have remained just as dumbfounded as the security forces.

Lucky for the duo, the other way down the corridor lead to an emergency exist that was not locked, and they could rush out of the racing team's area back into the city. As soon as they had left the complex, the Doctor let go of Sarah's hand so she could try to keep up with him by herself. It was still important that she remained close, however, because at the moment, she had not the slightest notion of where he wanted to go.

" **STOP OR WE WILL SHOOT!"** , the voice of the leading security officer bellowed after them – a threat that most certainly was not empty, judging by the tone of it.

Needless to say, they did not stop. Having been threatened more than often enough on their previous adventures, the two of them kept running fearlessly. As long as the Doctor was leading the way with confidence, Sarah trusted that he had a plan of some sort. Or maybe he did not have a plan, but then she trusted him to get a flash of inspiration at the right time. There were still many people out on the streets of Marbarett, but fortunately for them, they made way when they heard and saw the commotion going on, especially so as the officers with their drawn weapons got closer...

Even after the suspects had left the square behind them and continued to run uphill, back towards the heart of the city, Sarah could hear the security forces shouting after them, sometimes even their steps on the pavement echoing in the passages. When they passed by the shop windows of a shopping district, the Doctor suddenly took a sharp turn into an even narrower corridor between two houses and looked back just once to make sure that his companion was with him. Of course Sarah was still close by and followed him into a backyard, but she was seriously wondering if that little trick would be enough to lose their pursuers. She caught up to the Doctor before they went around another turn to the left, then again to the right, and just as she was about to run around the next corner, someone suddenly caught her by the arm and pulled her away from the backyard passage into a niche between two houses.

The young woman's heart skipped a beat in that one moment in which she had not been sure who it was, but before the feeling could stick, she was looking into the face of her friend, who had merely stopped her from running past him. It seemed he waited by the corner to stop and listen for a sign of the officers and now Sarah pressed her back to the wall as she did the same.

To Sarah's surprise, it remained comparatively quiet. There were still voices and the noise of people running, but finally all of that happened somewhere further away from them, almost as if the officers had actually missed them turning into the backyard.

"Have we lost them?", she asked the Doctor with a voice barely above a whisper.

But he did not reply to the question, just held up a finger and shushed her, before pointing into a new direction. "This way!", he ordered her quietly, and as usual, went ahead. The way he took now led them up a flight of stairs which was attached to a two-story building and, as it turned out, reached all the way up to its roof. With a surprisingly steady step, the Doctor ran across the slippery, green and glass-like surface while Sarah was flailing her arms and struggling not to fall, afraid that one slip could cause her to tumble down and break her neck.

Because of that extra care she quickly began to fall behind and the Doctor was not waiting up for her now. In fact, the next thing he did forced Sarah to stop dead and gasp. With a leap he went over the roof's edge and the last thing seen of him was the waving scarf as he fell down into the street below.

"DOCTOR!", she yelled fearfully and despite her clumsy attempts at crossing the roof, the young woman hurried to the edge. Because of the slope, she ended up on her knees sliding the last yards and had to press her hands against the smooth surface underneath so she would not drop right after her friend.

There was a moment of relief and she let out the breath she had been holding in shock. The Doctor stood on the pavement several yards below her, unharmed, with his arms opened in a welcoming gesture and waiting for her to take a leap of faith, quite literally.

"No fear!", he called to her and she could see the white of his teeth flashing when he showed her an encouraging grin. "Here; I'll help you if it's too deep a drop!"

There wasn't much she could have answered to that. After all, she was ready to follow him anywhere, as long as he seemed certain that she could make it without breaking a bone. Still, his companion bit her lower lip nervously. She wasn't very much afraid of heights, yet even so, Sarah did not want to take any more risks than necessary and pushed herself to the very edge of the roof first, where she could let her feet dangle down first. To try to get a feeling for the height...

Down there, her friend was flailing his arms a bit as if wanting to ask why she was taking so long, but when Sarah was finally mentally ready to make the drop, she noticed someone appearing behind the Doctor. In fact, it was not just one, but three people; The security officers who had pursued them earlier, and they had brought their firearms again to make matters more pressing.

"Uhm, Doctor…!" Sarah exclaimed and pointed behind him, which made the Doctor wonder why and he turned around.

He seemingly got a small fright by the sudden appearance of their pursuers and raised his hands properly and immediately this time.

"Ah! Hello, gentlemen…!", he greeted them. The young woman could not see his face now that he stood with his back turned to her, but she imagined him smiling sheepishly.

Feeling that she might be able to make the drop without his help after all, Sarah pushed herself off the roof's edge and fell down. It really was not quite as deep as it had looked at first, but she still landed with so much force that she had to bend her knees and touch the ground with her hands to absorb the shock.

The Doctor turned his head when he heard the clapping sound of her shoes coming down on the pavement and he smiled happily when he saw that she was back with him. Teasing, as he could be sometimes, he looked back at the officers and joked:

"Look; My companion just dropped in, too!"

Sarah beat off the dust from her clothes and hands and returned to the Doctor's side. Under other circumstances, she would have laughed at the Doctor's pun, but right now she did not really feel like laughing thanks to all these guns pointed at her and decided to raise her hands above her head, too, before they had to order her to.

"Why were we running away again, Doctor?", she whispered to the taller man next to her and her voice might have just given away how disappointed she was that their flight had failed to work out.

There was a guilty look in his eyes and he shrugged in a way that made him appear almost clueless.

"I thought I try something new for once...", he told her.


	6. A Gadget To Find The Culprit With (Ep2)

It was roughly half an hour later when the officers had brought the two travellers to their station and locked them up behind a honeycomb-like grid of bars until the time was right for interrogation. During that wait, Sarah and the Doctor were left sitting on a bench to ponder about what had happened and just how they had gotten involved. Most of the time, the young Earth woman was not short of something to say to her friend, but it was a little different right now. He sat leaning forward, the elbows on his knees, head resting in his hands and quite obviously deep in thought. Sarah would have gladly left him to it, but the silence between them was not something that had been born simply out of boredom, like it was most of the time. In fact, she felt that in a way she might be responsible for whatever had happened and that made it necessary to bring up the topic. Not to mention, of course, that she still did not know much more other than that she supposedly shot at a man with a laser gun.

"Doctor...", she began softly, "You trust me that I would never hurt someone just like that, don't you…?" As she lifted her eyes off the grey prison cell floor and looked at the Doctor's face from the side, that emotional part of her mind tried to frighten her with the idea that he might not agree. Rationally, however, she knew perfectly well that this deep feeling of trust among them was not a one-way relationship.

"Hm?" He frowned at first, now that he noticed he had been talked to, and finally turned his head to look at Sarah. She did not want to repeat her question, being frightened by a possible response on one side and feeling stupid about having to ask on the other. As it turned out, however, he had heard her perfectly well.

"Oh, of course you would never hurt someone unless it was really, really, _really_ necessary.", the Doctor reassured her with a sympathetic look in his eyes, "And when you tell me you didn't do it, I trust you..." The sentence was suspended by him when another thought seemingly intervened. "…I trust you more than my own eyes.", the Doctor said in such a way as if he had never quite realized one could put it like that.

But Sarah did not understand what he was getting at. Curiously she sought eye contact with him now that his gaze was drifting off again, following another line of thought she had no clue about.

"What do you mean, _more than your own eyes_? What did you see?"

"I saw you.", he said in a mysterious tone and deliberately left another short pause, "As you shot at the Ibrimaxian pilot. You were not threatened – at least not visibly – and seemingly acted out of your own accord..."

"Well, I know they are a shady bunch, but even they don't deserve to be harmed!", Sarah quickly said, shaking her head and feeling almost as if she had to make a point that; Yes, she had that opinion about them, but even so would never turn to hurt another being. Or as the Doctor had stated, she would need a very, very good reason to.

Her friend did not respond to her comment – quite obviously, he did not need to, because he was on her side – but something other than sympathy became noticeable in his look; The shock and disbelief still lingering after what he had witnessed. And Sarah remembered the expression on his face when he had woken her from unconsciousness, except it had been stronger then. There was no denying to it. This kind of emotion which he displayed was more than enough proof for Sarah that it really had happened.

The feeling of fear and worry sagged deeper into her stomach. Thankfully, the rational side of her brain was still around to keep herself from settling into this unpleasant state of mind. Gasping for air, she desperately thought of something to argue with, prove that it had not been her in a way that might be able to convince both of them. "Anyway!", she exclaimed rather loudly, and thus, snapped the Doctor out of his thoughts again, too.

"It couldn't have been me! I wasn't conscious at the time it happened, now, was I?" She put on a fake smile of confidence as she spoke, hoping dearly to make a point. "I mean, you found me sitting in that corridor!"

"Hm, yes. That's where I chased you to.", he replied, and Sarah felt almost disappointed about how, at first, he made it sound as if he had plenty of clues already. But then he, too, began to wonder about it. "I thought you had collapsed there... Just how did you pass out?"

That question gave Sarah new hope in trying to prove her innocence. "Exactly, Doctor! I did not pass out in that corridor!", she happily contradicted his assumption, "It must have been merely a minute or so after you left me with the Ibrimaxus team that I, uh... smelled a, sort of, funny smell..."

While she tried hard to rustle up her memory, the Doctor was already asking: "What sort of smell?"

"I can't really remember… it all went very fast from there. It must've been a tranquillizer of sorts. But I do remember that someone kept me from calling for help…!" And what an unpleasant memory that was, to be overpowered although she had been collapsing already...

The Doctor's eyes grew wider in surprise. "One of the crew members?", he asked.

Sarah shook her head. "No, no. They were all still in my sight; I would have seen them advancing towards me.", she answered. "No, this person grabbed me from behind, it everything went dark… and then, the next thing; There was you picking me up from the ground." A delicate smile appeared on her face when she thought of coming around with him at her side. It was funny how she had almost gotten used to that by now, and still, she was any less grateful for all the times he had rescued her.

"There was a moment when I lost you from my sight…", the Doctor mused, "I suppose that, theoretically speaking, this narrow time frame could have been enough to replace you, with a double, maybe..." Now that sounded like a theory Sarah could start putting her hope into. They already had encountered facsimile humans, so it seemed very plausible. The Doctor, however, did not appear to be entirely convinced by his own assumption. Running his hands over his temples, he admitted: "My problem with this is just that there are so many puzzle pieces to this case, but I'm not even sure they belong to the same picture..."

"You're speaking about the sabotage case?", Sarah wondered. It was the only other _"picture"_ that had been of interest lately. "Did I catch that right, that now I'm being accused of that, too? Why?"

"I don't know yet, but I intend to find out...", her friend responded with something like a sigh between his words, before he suddenly began to search his coat's pockets intensively. First the left side, then the right, and then the left again, because he just could not find what he was looking for. Eventually, he decided to empty his pockets and next to him, on the bench, landed the yellow yo-yo, the sonic screwdriver, a bag of Jelly Babies – of course – then a pair of clippers, a small plush dinosaur and a metal plate with screw holes in it.

"Sarah", the Doctor addressed her while he was still very busy searching, "The next time you see me pick something up, remind me to stop cluttering my pockets..."

"Just what are you looking for?", asked his companion, chuckled at him and then inspected some of the things which he had placed on the bench between them. The little plush dinosaur was made of red plaid cloth and had two big buttons for eyes, which was pretty cute as Sarah thought. Much cuter than the real deal, anyway.

"The robot detector. It's a small grey box with a light bulb..."

"You mean this here?" Sarah held up the very object he was about to describe; She had just found it among the other things he had already sorted out.

With a slightly confused look he took it from her hand. "Yes, this exactly!"

He pressed the sides of the rectangular grey box until, with a snap, the casing split in two and revealed its inside. The detector was not yet properly taken apart at the time the Doctor was already putting his other belongings back into the coat pockets – except for a grey-greenish circular panel with a glass surface. It strongly resembled a modern liquid crystal display.

Sarah watched closely as he took the robot detector apart, moved several wires and connectors around and installed the LCD into it. "So the other Sarah is an android, is that what you're thinking?", she wanted to know.

"It's possible.", the Doctor said as he worked on modifying the detector, "But we don't really know yet. It could be robotic, but it could be artificial in other ways, too. A tachyon image, for example. Or even made from semi-organic or organic material."

Resting her head in her hands while she kept watching him, Sarah guessed: "Or a clone...?" She didn't like the idea that there was another _'her'_ running around, and even less the thought that it might be something like a biological twin.

"Or a clone.", he agreed. "I'm turning the detector into a three-way analysis oscillation scanner now; With this we should be able to prove your innocence at least. In the best case, the graph will also show what kind of doppelganger we are dealing with." When he finally snapped the casing back into place, the red light bulb had been moved from the top to the front and in its original place the LCD screen was installed. As the Doctor switched the former robot detector on, the red light lit up right away, but knowing well that its function had changed, Sarah remained calm.

Seemingly displeased with its working, the Time Lord frowned at the box for a while, then knocked it on the side. Whatever that did, it did well, as far as she could guess from the expression on his face, which had just lit up. He turned the scanner around, so that the light bulb was now pointing towards him and pressed a button on its side. The red light shone brighter and Sarah noticed a jittering sound coming from the device he called an oscillation scanner. The sound lasted for only about two, three seconds maximum, and by then a wave reading had been registered and was stored on the screen. The resulting graph showed a large resemblance to images produced by an oscilloscope, but _'three-way analysis oscillation scanner'_ probably sounded a lot more impressive.

Smiling proud at his latest creation, the Doctor examined the results for himself. "Purely organic make-up, with high neural activity, and a bi-cardiac circulation system.", he interpreted the jagged wave line, smiling proudly and showed the screen back to Sarah. "Very much a Time Lord. What would you say, hm?"

Honestly, the reading could have displayed the ground movements during an earthquake: She understood nothing of it. Important to her was only that the device's results convinced the Doctor. "Very much you.", she just replied and his smile grew a little wider.

With two button presses he cleared the reading and went on to take another scan. Of Sarah-Jane, this time. The procedure remained the same, with the red light flashing up and that special sound to be heard. Surprisingly, she felt the light burning on her skin and was glad that it took no longer than a few seconds. After the hand held scanner had done its calculations, the Doctor showed her the results again. It was another jagged wave reading, but the amplitude was generally lower than before. "Also organic; Neural activity fairly low, simple internal build up with high blood circulation, suggesting inefficient energy consumption… Human, in all aspects.", he concluded and shrugged, unimpressed.

Sarah gave the little grey box a displeased look. It had exposed her as inferior to the Doctor… which was, in truth, exactly what she was, except that he himself rarely ever made her feel this way. Maybe it was because he looked so human and acted like one so often, too. But maybe it was also because sometimes, she could forget so easily that her friend was a superior being from another planet. It did not matter much to her whether he was from Gallifrey or, say, Liverpool as long as she understood what made him tick.

"So, will the scanner do?", she asked her friend, rather than to keep on pondering.

"It's not a sophisticated solution, but yes..." The Doctor suddenly looked up from the device and listened for a sound, while at the same time, he held up a hand to signify Sarah not to speak. Indeed, in the distance, she noticed footsteps that were quickly coming closer. "They will pick one of us for interrogation...", he figured and then turned to the woman sitting next to him. "Listen, I will go first. They cannot press charges against me and as soon as I am out, I will deal with your look-alike. Until then..."

Sarah opened her mouth to protest. How could she let him solve an entire case by himself?

But before she could get a single word out, the Doctor already cut her off again.

"Until then!", he temporarily raised his voice a bit, "I need you to stay here in detention. There is no better proof for your innocence than staying under lock and key, do you understand?"

Despite her reluctance to go with his plan, the companion nodded. However, when the Doctor averted his look to listen for the footsteps again, she took the chance to complain a little, anyway.

"So what am I going to do in all this time? Sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, eh?"

"Of course not. Here, open your hands..." He turned back around to face her, and Sarah felt quite relieved to hear that she would be able to do something useful. So naturally, she held out her hands with great expectation. The scanner went back into the Doctor's pockets and instead, he pulled out a small object which he covered with his hand, even kept it hidden from sight as he placed it into Sarah's. "I can't allow you to die of boredom...", the Time Lord said. There was no smile on his face, but a mischievous twinkle in his eye when he closed Sarah's palms around the object.

It was something round and wooden.

Her expectation turned into disappointment almost too fast when she imagined what it might be...

One of the security officers appeared behind the honeycomb-like grid that separated the prison cell from the hallway. He had brought a key with him and went immediately to unlock the door. "Sir.", the officer addressed the Doctor. "We will begin the interrogation now, will you please come with me?"

The Time Lord must have seen the change in Sarah's expression, now that she had a very good idea of what he had pressed into her hands, because a grin reappeared on his face just before he got up and walked straight away to the officer. He lifted his hat for a moment on the way to greet the man. "Ah, I wish all the police in the universe was as polite as the Skanish'!" They stepped out and the door was locked again behind them. Sarah pouted angrily as she watched the Doctor walk away. But as soon as both he and the officer had disappeared from her sight, she opened up her hands to confirm her suspicion.

It was the Doctor's yellow yo-yo.

Sarah rolled her eyes. Could he not have left her the sonic screwdriver at least?


	7. Doctor Holmes Investigates (Ep2)

==== ==== The Doctor==== ====

The Skanish' police turned out to be quite a reasonable bunch. It had not been very difficult to convince them that they had no real grounds to detain the Doctor on. Yes, he had helped an alleged criminal to escape – but that escape had been unsuccessful, so the Doctor was able to argue that maybe he had actually helped the police to catch Sarah-Jane. Aside from that, none of the accusations concerned him and all which he wanted to do was to solve the case – just like the police themselves. He had even shown his new oscillation scanner to the officers to mark his point. Of course, they had little idea of just how the device worked. The basic theory behind its function would not be discovered for another 200 years or so. Maybe more. Very likely more.

So while Sarah was still safe in detention, the Doctor was already on his way back to the team area of the racing building complex. There was no saying when or if her doppelganger would be seen again, so he had to go by any other clue to figure out what was going on. The officer who had tried to interrogate the Time Lord earlier had already revealed their next lead to him, when he answered truthfully to the question of who had called the security forces on Sarah. Apparently, not only Gabbo Beta – and now, Ibrimaxus, too – were affected by the sabotage. The leader of the Sagitari racing team claimed to have seen the young Earth woman already twice before and then called the police on her after the Ibrimaxian pilot had been shot at. Now the Doctor was on his way to find out just what they had seen.

He was making his way through the building complex past all the people who were still engaged in the racing preparations. It seemed as though the assault of before had been just a minor disruption to their daily lives, except that the one or the other watched the Doctor suspiciously as he walked down the hallway. They knew that he was here because of what had happened, not because of the race and that probably made them feel slightly nervous. Past the Ibrimaxus garage, and the Gabbo Beta one, too, the Doctor arrived at the Sagitari team box. It stood out among the rest thanks to grand decorations around its entrance made from fine woven cloth in yellow and orange colours. The Sagitari were a race of tall and lean bipeds whose bodies were covered in thousands of shimmering feathers and dressed in flowing robes made from the same fine cloth as the decorations on their garage entrance. They were known for elegance and a peaceful nature of mind.

When the Doctor strode into their crew's area, he found five of the Sagitari people in the middle of a team meeting.

"Good day, everyone!", he politely announced his presence and let his cheery voice ring through the room. "I hate to interrupt, but I'm looking for your team leader, a certain _San Aria_?"

All of them raised their long necks to look at the intruder, but only one of the Sagitari stepped forward, towards the Doctor. "I remember you.", the feathered creature spoke with a female voice – which was not a surprise if you knew that the majority of their population was female. "You were with the Earth woman, the saboteur. Should you not be in detention? What have you come here for now?"

"Well, if you care to know, the police let me go because I didn't actually take part in the sabotaging act." Quite obviously, the Doctor tried to get past this topic as quickly as possible after he had defended his case in front of the police already. It seemed quite unnecessary having to clarify his position among the racing teams, too. "But my friend is still under arrest and I want to investigate what exactly happened that got her there."

San Aria stepped closer and crossed her arms. She was so tall that the Doctor, for once, had to look up while talking to her. "It's laudable of you to defend her case, but was it not also you who chased the human down the hall?"

"Yes, it was.", the Doctor agreed. "But I still believe in her innocence. You see, I know her and I know that she would never commit a crime like that, so something very unusual must be going on here.", he continued fluently: "If I am not mistaken you told the police that you have seen her more than once today?"

The feathered humanoid mustered him for a while before she decided to tell him. "I saw her twice. Once, shortly after our ATRV had been vandalized and the other time I caught her coming out of the Gabbo Beta garage. I sensed that she had something do with it, so I chased her, but she escaped through the public entrance into the crowd. It was near impossible to keep up from there – unfortunately."

A frown appeared on the time traveller's face.

Just before the Doctor and Sarah had taken the back entrance to the racing teams area, his companion spotted someone looking just like her running through the mass of people who stood waiting in front of the public entrance. Could this have been the same incident?

"Indeed, I have heard that Gabbo Beta had some serious troubles during the qualification.", San Aria kept explaining. "We're all very busy, so I decided to let it go at first. But when I heard the Ibrimaxus pilot scream, I thought that human creature had gone too far."

"Just how was your ATRV damaged?", the Doctor kept asking. He needed more details on this. ATRV – by the way – was short for _All Terrain Racing Vehicle_ , which was the proper description for the hovercraft cars used in the intergalactic races.

"Someone tried to forcefully open the lock of the engine cover, but aside from a number of bumps and scratches did not get very far. I thank the great heavens for that."

Truthfully speaking, that sounded less like vandalism and more like a failed attempt at another sabotage.

"Do you remember when that happened?"

The taller woman pondered for a little while. "It was earlier this noon. Sometime around 19 o'clock, it must have been. We were all just coming back from lunch at the time."

This planet was part of a binary solar system, which meant that their days were longer. About 36 hours, here on Skania. Their year also consisted of considerably more days than on Earth, which made an annual event, such as this one, a very special and important matter just because of its rare occurence.

"I saw the human girl coming out of the Gabbo Beta garage only a short while afterwards.", San Aria continued and the Doctor stood there, rubbing his neck and trying to recall when he and Sarah had taken their trip from the gallery through the city. It could have happened at the same time, that was very much possible. Except that he had been with Sarah, which went to further prove that a look-alike of her had to exist.

"She did not happen to carry a laser gun with a knife attachement, did she?"

"Now that you mention it..." San Aria went a few steps up and down the garage before she turned back to the Doctor, a slightly shocked expression filling her big black eyes now. "Yes, I think so..."

==== ==== Sarah-Jane==== ====

Sarah-Jane was pacing through her prison cell. From her hand, she let the yo-yo bounce and caught it over and over again. She had always thought that she was a bit better at it than she just turned out to be, but well… she had plenty of time to improve now. And it was good that the Doctor had left her with something to occupy herself with. Even though she would have preferred to do something that was of use to both of them, at least she could keep her mind from worrying too much about that whole doppelganger business.

Hopefully the Doctor would figure it out quickly and get her out of here…

The young woman attempted to perform a double loop with the toy – a trick the Doctor was still teaching himself, too – but ended up almost hitting herself in the head with it. Sighing, she removed the thread from her finger and started to wind it back up again, just like she had done several times in the past minutes.

Suddenly, however, she perked up her ears as she heard a clicking sound coming from the cell door. Curious to what it could have been, Sarah went to check on it, but when she pressed her hand against the door, it swung open almost by itself. Someone had unlocked it…

"Doctor…?", she whispered into the hallway and tried to peek out. His instruction had been clear, Sarah was meant to wait until he came back for her with the evidence that would free her of the charges. But of course, deep down one part of her was hoping that he had changed his mind, turned back and decided to help her break out despite of the rules of the law. "Doctor, was that you?"

"Go, little one.", said a voice in reply.

It was the voice of a man, almost strict in tone, and definitely not the Doctor's. Although it seemingly came from one end of the hallway, Sarah could not spot anyone nearby. Not even as much as the shadow of a person.

"Go and find the Doctor.", the voice instructed her.

What a strange thing to happen. Sarah hesitated, wary of the situation. "Is the Doctor in danger?", she asked the voice. There had to be a reason why he had not come himself. And who was this guy who helped her, anyway? Why did he not show himself?

Her hope for a reply quickly faded when she kept waiting and still none followed. The owner of the voice just had left the decision to her. Sarah had not yet taken a step outside, but the thought had gotten stuck in her mind now. The Doctor was on an adventure without her, but what if he needed her help? He had that habit of overestimating himself every once in a while. After all, she had been against having to wait from the very start, so Sarah could not just sit back down again, now that the door was open.

The temptation alone was too great.

==== ==== The Doctor==== ====

"The Gabbo Beta One team had no idea it was her.", the Doctor just concluded. "Even I assumed that the damage was caused by a sonic drill, but in fact, it's possible to achieve the same with a well placed blast of a laser gun..."

San Aria watched him while he continued to reconstruct how the first successful sabotage had been executed.

"But Sarah wouldn't know how to do it. This technology is far too advanced for the time she is from. I would be very surprised if she has seen any of it anywhere before..." Another clue that it had not been her, but it was still no definite evidence. The Doctor was the only one around here who knew what Sarah was like, and the Earth at the end of the 20th century, in general. But he was almost considered an accomplice, so the mere opinion of his weighed near to nothing in front of the court. What he really needed was to get that scan of the false Sarah. Or anything about her, for example where she had come from and where she was hiding now. Had she really acted out of her own accord or was there someone else who had created that copy of Sarah and instructed it to commit these crimes? But who would have known of Sarah before the Doctor had brought her here in the first place? Too many questions still left unanswered…

The Doctor raised his head and sought the look into San Aria's beady eyes.

"You wouldn't happen to have any clue about where she had come from or run to?", he asked the feathered alien.

San Aria shook her head, slightly confused to why he had to ask. "She should be at the Marbarett police station in detention, no?"

"No, no.", the Doctor contradicted her and then set out to explain his theory. "That's the real Sarah sitting in detention right now. She has been framed; There must be another one, looking just like her!"

His conversation partner showed him a soft, sympathetic smile. "You humans are so loyal to each other. You just won't believe that it really was her, will you?"

She had barely finished the first sentence and the Doctor's expression had already turned stern, almost angry.

"I'm not human, I-!"

He was cut off mid-sentence by a sudden commotion going on in the hallway.

" **MAKE WAY FOR THE PARAMEDICS!** ", someone yelled and the Doctor turned around just in time to see a group of medics with a stretcher run by.


	8. Two Of Her (Ep2)

With a few steps he hurried back to the Sagitari garage entrance and peeked out. San Aria was following him shortly.

"Oh, not again...", she whispered as they saw the paramedics turn into the Gabbo Beta team's box. The Doctor barely even heard her comment, because as soon as he realized that it must have been another assault, he dashed down the hallway. Out of curiosity, probably, the Sagitari team manager stuck with him.

They came to a sliding halt in front of the garage entrance, from where they could see how the medical team just attended to the Gabbo Beta main pilot. He laid against his ATRV, wincing in pain. In his shoulder was a bleeding wound with scorched edges and there was a faint smell of burnt flesh in the air.

"That's horrible…!", San Aria said quietly, a certain amount of shock audible in her voice.

And the Doctor was shocked, too, although what shocked him more was the knowledge that this was yet another crime Sarah would be accounted for. However, with the clues already collected, the real Sarah still in detention and the scanner in his pocket, this also had to be the best moment to finally get that definitive evidence that his friend was innocent. He turned to the lean creature who looked onto the crime scene over his shoulder. "Will you help me catch the culprit? She can't have gotten far yet!" Instead of waiting for an answer, he already turned back to the slowly gathering crowd of curious onlookers in the hallway to try and see if he could spot the look-alike of the young woman.

"Anything I can do to stop these crimes...", San Aria's voice assured him.

"Doctor!" Someone suddenly called out. It was the GB1 team leader, Robin Banks, waving over to the Time Lord. The short man was even more distraught than before, but the Doctor really had no time for him right now and spared him little more than a glance.

He just rushed off into the crowd, and San Aria followed him now that she had agreed to carry out his favour. With eyes scanning his surroundings on every step, the Doctor anxiously searched to find someone matching Sarah's description, until, finally – there she was – just turning into a corridor down the hallway!

Quick as ever, he immediately pointed the young woman out to the Sagitari next to him. "Try to chase her out of the emergency exit!", he instructed his cooperator and without any further explanation to what he was going to do, ran away into the opposite direction.

While San Aria sprinted down the hallway, no doubt alarming the other Sarah quickly, the Doctor made his way through the crew area into the public one and fought through the crowds of people streaming into the building. He jumped over the automatic ticket scanners and left security officers standing there gasping as he rushed past and out of the public entrance. Taking an immediate turn to the left, he continued running along the building's walls towards the other side of the emergency exit.

Still several yards from his destination away, he could already watch from afar how the young, dark-haired Earth woman stumbled out of the door. Since San Aria was still after her, she immediately pushed it shut and then fired a shot at the handle, which caused the door's closing mechanism to lock up. There was a rumbling heard and the door bulged for a moment when the tall figure of the alien creature crashed into it from the other side.

But it gave the Doctor a tiny, but magnificent amount of time he so desperately needed to get closer...

One of his hands already reached for the oscillation scanner when Sarah noticed him coming towards her. She looked only mildly shocked to see that the chase was not over yet and turned away from the Doctor at once. That second of hesitation there had barely been enough for him to close in and he lunged out to grab her wrist with one hand, the scanner already readied for reading in his other. A shock went through both of them as Sarah was abruptly stopped in her flight. She closely avoided falling over her own feet and the Doctor had almost lost his balance, too, if only the woman had been heavier or stronger. But she was not. The young woman who now pulled on her hand and struggled to get away with all of her force was weak – just as weak as he knew Sarah was. It did not take much strength for him to hold her in place, despite her best efforts to escape. Her body was short and slender – average for an Earth woman of her age and simply not made to withstand or exert great force. He was not very strong either, just stronger than her, and that he considered neither an achievement, nor a necessity to have.

The expression on the Doctor's face went blank in that moment he realized just how similar this woman was to the real Sarah... Why would someone want to create an artificial copy of her that was just as feeble when they could use some highly durable material?

She still wriggled forcibly, trying to escape the Doctor's tight grip on her wrist, and he had to move with her as if she was a fish on a fishing line just so he would not lose his hold.

"Let me go!", she cried out. Usually, she would only ever shout at the bad guys in such a way. **"LET ME GO!"**

Her screaming, too, sounded too much like the real Sarah. Something about that extra high-pitched tone of the girl's voice made it clear that she was in pain, and the Doctor was already fearful enough of hurting her as it was. Suddenly it seemed that he had turned into the villain. He out of all people, a saviour of so many lives. But while the Doctor remained struck by this feeling, the other Sarah changed her method of escape and went from over trying to flee to attacking. She began to hit his hand with the handle of the laser gun first, and he realized only just in time what she was about to do next. When she swung the sharp side of her weapon at him, he barely dodged the blow in time. The knife attachment on the top of the gun probably could have cut through his scarf and throat with ease. A second swing directed at his hand and the Doctor was forced to finally let go of her. The force with which she pulled away caused her to stumble again and there was a clattering sound as something fell out of her pocket and landed on the pavement. Within just a second, she rose back to her feet and sprinted off into the distance.

By the time she vanished among the people on the streets, the Doctor watched her leave with a bitter expression on his face and the lingering shock of possibly having caused pain to a dear friend. Not to mention that against all logic and common sense, this Sarah still turned out to be a very convincing copy. Her physiology down to her voice and gestures seemed the same. But there was hope for clarity, as the Doctor reached down to examine the object which the other Sarah had dropped during her escape.

It was something red, round and wooden, and he pondered about its meaning just for a little while before he stashed it away into his coat pocket and pulled up the scanner with the successful wave reading of Sarah's internal make-up instead. By pressing the button on the outside, he switched through the readings he had already taken to compare them. Adding to his already sincere expression, an anxious frown appeared on his face.

As if prodded by an unseen force, the Doctor suddenly jumped, turned around and hurried back indoors through the public entrance. While being shouted at for skipping the line – again – he sought the first public communicator he could find and punched in the sequence for the local police station through a set of arrow shaped keys.

While the thing began to connect, the Time Lord tapped his foot nervously.

"Marbarett internal security forces office, officer Fillis speaking.", a voice finally greeted the caller.

"Sarah, is she still with you?" The Doctor threw his question at him, before quickly rephrasing it in such a way that it could be understood, too. "That young human woman you captured earlier, is she still in detention?", he demanded to know.

"You mean the one that was charged with sabotage?", asked the voice after a second of silent confusion.

"Yes, yes!", the Doctor almost shouted back at him, getting very impatient now.

"We're currently searching the city for her again. Why? Do you want to report a sighting of her?"

"Ah, there you are, Doctor!"

The officer's question was left unanswered when the Doctor heard the familiar voice of his dear friend.

==== ==== Sarah-Jane ==== ====

When he turned around after she had called out his name, he had a look on his face as though she was the alien out of the two of them. Sarah had originally found him in front of this wall telephone, or whatever it was, but something about her had made him forget about the conversation he had been in completely. And while at first, Sarah had been happy to find him well and far out of danger, the shocked expression on his face stirred massive amounts of worry inside of her again. Almost immediately she could feel that it had happened again, that he had run into her look-alike and that something about that meeting had been so convincing that he simply could not believe he was staring at the same woman. And she didn't want to believe it either, because she knew exactly where she had been. This time around she had not even passed out.

"What's the matter?", Sarah asked as he walked over to her, his eyes still wide and so fixed on her that whoever had been on the other end of the phone was left to end the conversation themselves.

Without as much as an explanation to why he did it, the Doctor unexpectedly took her left hand and felt the joint of her wrist. Sarah gave him a confused look, but let him do it, although she was wondering what was bothering him to such a degree that we was not even talking about it. After just a few seconds, however, she noticed something about the expression on his face that revealed his concern to her. That he was just checking if she had hurt her wrist. Not that she really understood why. After all, he had been dragging her by this hand around all kinds of places before. It took another second or so before it finally clicked in her mind and the Doctor's companion realized that maybe he was checking for an injury that had happened to the other Sarah and not to her. But was it really that bad? Were they so similar that even he could not tell them apart any more?

"Doctor! It's me, the real Sarah.", she tried to tell him.

"I know." He let go of her, but when he looked back into her eyes, an angry frown had appeared on his face. "Why didn't you stay in detention like I told you to?"

Sarah gasped as she heard his sudden change in tone. "Because I thought you sent someone to get me out!", she argued and without being fully aware of it, she had quickly adapted her own voice to match his upset tone.

"What? Don't be ridiculous, I didn't send anyone." His brows furrowed deeper, and a sort of confusion mixed into his expression when he shook his head.

"Then who opened my cell door and told me to go and find you, hm?", she gave him a hint to think about.

" **Well, the very same person who is trying to frame you, I suppose** **!"** , the Doctor concluded suddenly, and loudly. He had spoken rash and upset at first, but within just a second the anger faded from his face again – when he fully realized just what he had said. "My goodness, Sarah, you've just done what they wanted…!"

The young woman did not like it when he got furious, even if only for a short moment. And she had to find out that it also stung in her heart if that fury was directed at her. Sill sullen, but more quietly than before, Sarah tried to make her actions understood. "I couldn't stay there.", she said and added immediately: "I thought you might be in danger."

His wandering gaze turned back to her, still looking displeased to a minor degree, but she knew that he understood her well, because he, too, was concerned for her safety at least as much as she was concerned for his. Proof to that was the simple fact that he did not try to continue this argument. The longer his eyes rested on her and the longer Sarah kept staring back, the softer his expression turned, until, after several seconds, he just sighed and averted his look.

She too, could have sighed. In relief, knowing that it had not come so far yet that they were fighting over some stupid misunderstanding which had been brought about by someone else.

" **THERE SHE IS!"** , a voice suddenly rung across the entrance hall.


	9. Perfectly Identical (Ep2)

As the late 20th century Earth woman turned her head, she saw security forces running towards her and the Doctor. With them was a tall and lean alien creature covered in green feathers and red robes, and they were all closing in rather fast.

"Stay right where you are! You are under arrest!", one of the officers called out and pointed at Sarah, thankfully not with his gun, but just with a finger. The deadly weapon was already drawn still, so she could not really get her hopes up that things would go different this time around. She was not also very much in the mood for another chase.

Long before the security forces and the tall creature came to a standstill in front of Sarah and the Doctor, her friend raised a hand and positioned himself between them.

"Easy! Easy, everyone!" he demanded of them.

The first security officer to arrive seemed wary about whether to threaten the Doctor or not. He held his laser gun still pointing upwards and his gaze went back and forth between the two travellers several times. "Are you still cooperating with the criminal?", he wanted to know. Although he clearly had not been among the policemen who had arrested her earlier and was not acting very confident in general, it seemed to Sarah that someone must have informed him about at least one part of the case.

"Now you will surely see that your human woman has gone too far!" Just like the officer's question before, the feathered alien also directed this one at the tall man with the scarf. It spoke with an oddly elegant female voice, which surprisingly had both an angry and disappointed ring to it, too.

"I am innocent! Why won't you see that?", the time traveller's companion begged. It was not a very good attempt at defending herself, but Sarah had to try anyway. She was getting very tired of these accusations that seemed so far fetched to someone who was as harmless as she was. It simply was not fair to her!

"I wouldn't still be here if I was guilty! I would be running, or hiding, or – I don't know! I didn't do it!"

"It could be a trick.", the officer counter-argued, but then the Doctor intervened again.

"It's not.", he responded in a calm tone – unlike everyone else – and slowly lowered the hand which, by unspoken authority, had halted the entire security force. "You cannot detain her, officer, because I have evidence that you are after the wrong girl." Such a bold claim, yet he did not even bother to look into the faces of their opposition. His eyes remained half hidden in the shadow of his unruly curls.

Confused looks were exchanged among the security team members and the alien creature.

"What do you mean?"

Almost casually, the Doctor pulled the scanning device out of his coat pocket. "This is an oscillation scanner.", he explained. "And with it, I was able to capture both a reading of the dear girl next to me as well as the _false friend_ I chased outside. Here, look for yourself." Turning the device so that the screen was visible to everyone but himself, he showed his results around and used the buttons on the side of the box to switch through the different graphs. Although the Doctor had already tested his little tool in her presence and even read aloud the interpretation of the graphs it had drawn, Sarah still had little clue what they meant. However, despite lacking this knowledge, every one who stood gathered around the scanner could plainly see a difference between the two patterns on the screen. The one reading was not like the other; Two different beings. Although the companion felt the funny sensation of a deja-vu looking at them, a triumphant smile spread across her face. No one would be able to argue with scientific evidence!

"External appearances are deceiving, officer.", the Doctor lectured the policeman and went on to make the first assumptions about the real culprit. "I dare say you might be dealing with something like a very sophisticated, three-dimensional particle projection supported by a collision matrix."

The lot looked at the travellers almost dumbfounded and Sarah had to keep herself from pointing out that the Doctor and she had been right from the very start, except no one had listened to them. There was just one thing that alleviated her happiness about not being the main suspect any more – and that was the fact that the Doctor was not smiling one bit, although he was usually such an easily amused fellow. Why was he still so serious?

"Now, if I am not mistaken about Skanish law, then you are not allowed to proceed any further in your investigations against Sarah unless you can provide counter evidence." After this conclusion by the scientist, the officers quietly exchanged some words among each other and the feathered creature listened in on them. After a few seconds they all looked displeased as though they did not like to agree to the Doctor's words, but had to, anyway, because he was right.

Half of them already gave up and turned to walk away, but the leading officer signalled them to wait a little longer.

"It will be awfully difficult not to capture her again if both of them look just the same.", he stated and turned from the Doctor to Sarah with a surprisingly polite tone. "May I suggest that you would allow us to detain you, on a purely voluntary basis of course?"

In an instinctive reaction, she would have almost responded _"_ _No!_ _"_ , and probably very firmly, too, but then she remembered that the Doctor had thought it was a good idea for her to stay under lock and key while the doppelganger was about. Maybe he still thought so, and instead of sharply rejecting the suggestion, Sarah raised her head to look at her friend and hoped for him to decide what would be best. She had no intention of contradicting him again. However, he did not seem particularly interested to pick that conversation back up...

Instead, the Doctor took a breath and rolled his eyes, obviously quite annoyed that the police forces were still hanging about. "Come on, officer! It's unnecessary to make things more complicated than they need to be." The Doctor reached into a pocket on his waistcoat and conjured up a silver glittering star sticker. After he had peeled away the paper on the backside, he stuck it to the forehead of a perplexed blinking Sarah-Jane. "Will that do?", he then asked the officer.

This funny move, she had not seen coming. The sticker did not even stick very well, because it had ended up on her hair rather than on her skin. As soon as the moment of surprise had left her, she carefully peeled it off again and placed it on her blouse instead, where it looked at least acceptable in terms of fashion.

After she had adjusted the sticker and looked back up, the leading police force officer was just slowly retreating from them. "I hope so...", he answered to the Doctor as he left, but had such a strangely confused, wary look in his eye. Sarah knew a similar expression from the Brigadier. She always thought those were the moments in which he had wanted to call the Time Lord a madman, except that he had never actually dared to speak the words in his presence. In fact, she did not think many would dare to.

Sarah stood and waited until the public entrance in visual and hearing range was clear of security forces, but then she happily danced around the Doctor once, just until she was positioned back in front of him. With big, joyful eyes she gazed up into his face, which was still so terribly sincere. "That showed them, hm, Doctor? Maybe next time they'll listen to us!" She celebrated the triumph of the truth, hoping to finally get a smile out of him, too. It was his achievement, after all!

But when it became clearer that his mood was not lightening up any time soon, Sarah's smile lowered more and more until it had vanished completely and all that remained was a begging expression. Begging that he might at least explain what was still bothering him so much.

"I did not show them anything, Sarah...", the Doctor eventually told her.

"But was that not…?"

"It was the wave reading I took of myself earlier.", he said and his look went down to his feet for a moment. "Lucky for us, so far, oscillation scanning techniques only exist in theory around this galaxy. They don't know how to interpret them."

That explained why Sarah had thought for a moment she recognized the reading. So he had only bended the truth; Used their lack of scientific understanding to get her free of charges… It had not been a victory at all. It had been an easy way of gaining more time. Sarah's heart sank and she felt twice as bad after having been so joyful around her friend.

"So what about the one you took of the other me?", the young woman tried again after a moment of silence and couldn't help but look down to hide the guilty look on her face. She still hoped that he had not been forced to lie about this as well, but had to ask anyway. "Or were you unable to scan her?"

The Doctor did not respond verbally to that. He just took the scanner and held it into Sarah's lowered field of view. There was the picture of her own wave reading on it; She recognized it now by the lower amplitude compared to the Doctor's. He clicked the button on the outside and the screen went dark for the fraction of a second just to come back with the very same picture still on it.

"Well, yes…", she uttered, surprisingly unimpressed and laid her hand on the other side of the device to keep it more still as the Doctor clicked the button twice more. Flickering image, no difference. "So where's the other picture...?"

The young woman turned her head when she felt the Doctor stepping closer to her. He leaned slightly forward and brought his face closer to hers.

" _That_ _IS_ _the other picture._ They are identical.", he told her, with a foreboding tone to his voice and a concerned look in the blue eyes that were rapidly scanning Sarah's features for a reaction.

She knew what that meant, and suddenly, the young woman felt as though some weight had been placed on her lungs. The implication was frightening. "That's not possible! Your scanner must be faulty! ...Right?" It was a desperate attempt to contradict the obvious and she could not even get the words out to sound as sincere as they should have. In the back of her mind she knew that the Doctor's tool was working just fine, and he, of course, knew that even better than she did. He would have told her straight away if there was any doubt to the result.

"It's not just that.", he kept explaining. "When I grabbed her to get the scan, something fell out of her pocket..." As he returned the scanner to his coat pocket and rummaged for something else, the tall man repositioned himself to the opposite of Sarah. After a few seconds, he showed her a small, round object. It was a yo-yo, made from wood and painted red.

Perplexed, the young woman reached for the one the Doctor had given her before he had left the detention cell. She brought the yo-yo forward to compare it with the one the other Sarah had dropped. They were similar in design and material, but the one in her hand was yellow and more worn. A little bit of hope returned to the Earth woman when she noticed the many small differences. She even tried a light smile as she picked the eye contact back up. "Looks like they got the colour wrong...", she stated what must have been already obvious to him.

"I'm not so sure about that." There was something like confusion mixing back into the Doctor's concerned expression. He reached down into his coat pocket again and before Sarah could ask, he held another red yo-yo out to her. There were two of them now, one in each of his hands. Her eyes were not precise enough to tell for sure, but she had that feeling, just by looking at the objects, that they were perfectly identical down to the very pattern of the wood...

==== ==== END of EPISODE 2 ==== ====


	10. Red, Red And Yellow (Ep3)

==== ==== EPISODE 3 ==== ====

There were two perfectly equal yo-yos in the Doctor's hands, another one of a different colour in Sarah's and they had two identical scanner readings of what appeared to be the same woman. Except that none of it could be true. Sarah could never doubt herself, because she knew where she had been all the time. Well, maybe except for these few seconds in which she had passed out, but still… Every fibre in her body would rather revolt against her own being than to let her shoot at innocent people.

If the Doctor had been faced with any other case, maybe they would be happy about the amount of clues they had already collected, but right now and with what they got, he looked just as confused as Sarah-Jane felt. On top of everything, there was a new fear that had settled into the young woman's mind. If there really was no other Sarah, then the Doctor had to doubt her, which would probably turn out to be more painful than anything if it ever came to it. It would be like betraying him and all his pacifist values she had always believed in. And that was just not her.

Nothing fitted together.

"Hold these for a moment." Without any further warning, the Doctor pressed the seemingly identical toys into Sarah's hands and took the oscillation scanner back out. He quickly went on to take readings of all of the yo-yos and then stepped to the side of the young woman so they could look at the results together. The graphs painted on the LCD screen looked a lot different from the other readings which he had taken from people. They were almost entirely flat with the exception of one peak at the beginning of the wave form. As he switched through the different pictures, the Doctor kept a finger at this first peak, so that they could find it back more easily. "Red… Red… Yellow one.", he commented on every button press. As it turned out, the first two readings were identical – just as Sarah had feared – and only the third one varied by a degree that was just about visible on the wave reading.

With his brows furrowed deeply, the Doctor looked out into the distance, past all the people gathered in the entrance area. "I don't understand.", he said, partially to himself, and continued to speak his thoughts. "This isn't just a copy, it's like we are looking at the very same object. Yet still, there shouldn't be two of them. What is it that I am overlooking…!?" While his mind was racing, the Time Lord narrowed his eyes and tapped at the side of the scanner in a rhythm.

Sarah sighed. Usually she was the one to make the suggestions that would point him into the right direction, but if they were not talking about androids, and not about clones, what was left?

"… parallel universes?", she took a wild guess. In one of UNIT's older files there had been a mentioning of this, but she was not very hopeful that it had anything to do with their latest dilemma. It sounded a little far fetched, even for the concepts the Doctor dealt with.

She had just said the words as the Doctor's eyes widened with sudden enlightenment."Ah, parallel universes!", he exclaimed, but Sarah remained wary. Probably she had already felt that in the next second, his expression would turn back to being sceptical. "No, that's not it...", he quickly discarded the idea again and rubbed his chin as he quietly explained: "...Reality would have been torn apart by now."

His companion had looked down to the floor only for a short moment, but immediately raised her head again when the Doctor surprisingly added: "And then, there's Robin Banks..." His gaze was still overlooking the crowd in the entrance hall, staring at the same unspecific point in the distance, now for minutes already.

Sarah frowned, confused once more, but also curious to hear about another clue.

"What about him?", she asked.

"He's looking for us.", came the surprisingly simple conclusion and her tall friend pointed out to her a short, black-haired man wearing the GB1 team label. He must have spotted him while his look had been fixed at the crowd so absent-mindedly.

"Doctor! I've been looking for you!", Robin Banks called out once he had come so close that it was not necessary to shout throughout the entire hall any more. "I have some very important things to discuss!"

The team leader had not reached the duo yet when the Doctor waved over to him, a friendly greeting gesture that was merely missing a smile. "I'm absolutely certain you do...", he said so quietly that it had been, at best, meant for Sarah to hear.

"As you have seen, Doctor, there has been an assault on my pilot...", Banks told them once he had finally arrived in front of the two, but Sarah interrupted him before he could continue.

"Will he be all right?", she had to know. It might not have been her fault, but that did not mean that she did not care about the victim's health.

Banks looked over to the young woman as he replied, and surprisingly, there was not trace of suspicion in his eyes. "The wound was not lethal.", he told her directly, but then turned back to the Doctor. "But he won't be able to drive in his current condition. You see, Doctor, I've only brought a skeleton crew here and I was wondering..."

When the team leader began to hesitate and to lower his voice, the Doctor suddenly laughed out. Sarah's heart immediately felt lighter to see him amused, although she was not so certain it was for the right reasons.

"You want me to take the spot, is that it? Have you read the news lately?"

Judging by Banks face, he either did not get what was so funny about it or he meant to emphasise on his seriousness. "Nonsense, Doctor! Your unconventional solution was the only reason we made it through the qualification phase. If you were in on the sabotage, all you would have needed to do was to walk past us."

It was nice to hear that someone was still siding with the Doctor, even though everyone else was accusing his best friend of terrible crimes and naturally assumed that he was an accomplice. The Time Lord's opinion, however, differed slightly. "What about Sarah then?", he asked the Earth colonist from Gabbo Beta and nodded towards his companion.

Banks tilted his head and thought about the question for a few seconds while he looked at the young woman. Eventually, he shrugged. "I just can't think of her as someone who goes around shooting people. Now, our Inis is a tough woman, but – no offence – you seem as if you're just following _him_ around. Besides, I only believe what I've seen with my own eyes."

Sarah gasped. _No offence_ , he said! There was no ' _just_ ' about following the Doctor around! But seeing how he was the first in a while not to accuse Sarah of something, she held back a sharp comment and put on a slightly irritated smile instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed her time travelling friend turning his head towards her, with an encouraging smile on his face, and when Sarah looked at him he nodded in the other man's direction as if to say. _'Look, someone else also still believes in you!'_ Of course he was right, and she felt a new hope growing inside of her after all. It was not that Banks had said anything that would have made the evidence less conflicting, but being trusted by someone else other than her best friend was a good sign, still.

"Well...", the Doctor began anew after he had turned back towards their conversation partner and picked up the topic up from where they had been sidetracked before, "I would really like to help you out, Banks, but you see we're still in the middle of an investigation. I suggest, however, that you give your co-pilot a promotion. He'll be very happy, I presume!"

"Oh! You can let go of the sabotage for all I care!", the team manager said with a wave of the hand. "If the Ibrimaxians win, none of it will matter any more!"

"But their pilot has been assaulted, too, I thought?", Sarah asked, curious to why he assumed that they were in any better position now than his team.

Banks shook his head, although he did not entirely disagree. "Yes, but he was shot in the leg. He doesn't need the legs to drive, and knowing how tough their kind are, the mental shock will have passed a long while ago already. Compared to my pilot, he's perfectly fit." Before continuing, he looked back at the Doctor. "Promoting the co-pilot won't do. He's got a racing licence, yes, but he would have to drive a heavily damaged vehicle all by himself. Rupp told me that there's too little time left to repair everything." The short man took out a handkerchief and wiped some drops of sweat from his forehead. Strangely, Sarah found that he was calmer than before, but then again, he also seemed even more hopeless. "I beg of you, Doctor.", he suddenly began to plead, in the way someone did when they had little prospect of being heard. "You're willing to help, you clearly have the knowledge; Isn't there any way you can support my team? I'm certain with as little time left as there is, no more sabotages will happen. All we have to do is to win now!"

The Doctor sighed and lowered his head to allow some of his curls to cover his eyes. Sarah knew well that he had a weak spot when it came to people asking him for help, and she also knew it annoyed him. He usually preferred to help before he was asked. Of course, Banks must have hit that spot quite by accident. At first, the Time Lord did not answer and Sarah could watch the Gabbo Beta team leader becoming nervous as he waited for a response of any kind, but then, after a little while of pondering, the Doctor said something curious. "All right, I will do it. I will help you with your repairs, but it's up to you to re-organize your drivers.", he surprisingly agreed and Sarah could almost watch a weight break away from the shorter man's shoulders.

"Thank you, Doctor! Rest assured that your efforts will be well rewarded!"

But as for the Earth woman, she was not happy at all with the Doctor's decision. "But what about the investigation?", she demanded to know. They were so deeply involved in this, they already had some clues – how could they drop the case now?

When he turned towards his companion, there was a look in his eyes that sought for understanding. "There isn't much left we can do, Sarah. We cannot foretell when the next assault will happen, or who it will happen to and we most certainly won't find new clues until we can get a hold of the other you. So until then, I might as well help them. After all, this is still an important event to a federation that's at the verge of a war."

Of course, she understood what he meant and if she would have had any suggestion to how they could have continued their investigations she would have mentioned it now. But she did not have any; It was just like he had said. There was nowhere else to go, the only one who held the definitive clues was that other woman who looked just like her. "What about me, then? You don't want me to go into detention again, do you?"

"No, of course not.", he said almost as if he had never suggested it in the first place. "I have a number of theories about the pattern of the doppelganger's occurrences, and this time, I want you to stay with me."

Sarah showed him a smile of relief. "Ah, that's good news!", she gladly exclaimed. Being around him was much better than being left to wait somewhere. She just never had the patience to stay where he told her to, anyway – probably because of all the times she had gotten him out of trouble, and her mind could play nasty tricks on her when she was worried.

"Doctor, let's hurry back to the garage! Please!", Banks interrupted their dialogue suddenly and had already begun to anxiously wander up and down again.

"Right." The Doctor agreed with a nod, put his oscillation scanner away, and quickly went ahead even before the team leader had finished his pacing around.

Running a few steps to catch up, Sarah made it back to the time traveller's side and returned to him the yo-yos she was still holding. While one after the other vanished into the Doctor's pockets, she noticed that he took care not to store both of the red ones on the same side of his coat. "By the way, just how many of these do you own…?", his companion casually wanted to know.

"A few. I couldn't settle on a colour when I bought them.", he replied. "But right now it's only important that I own one too many."


	11. Sarah's Limited Investigation (Ep3)

Merely a few minutes later they made it back to the Gabbo Beta team's garage. And quite gladly so, as far as Sarah was concerned. She disliked the looks she had gotten when they had passed through the large hallway which connected the team boxes. Whereas before she had only felt that the Ibrimaxians had been hostile towards her, now it seemed that a lot of the other crews shared that feeling. And if it was not hostility that their eyes showed, it was a sort of dread, which was almost worse to Sarah. If it had been possible, she would have liked to stop and tell each and every one of them that she was innocent – and confidently tell them that they were going to prove it, too. But there really was not the time and she probably did not have the capability to convince them all, anyway. _Try to think positive_ , she told herself and remembered that Banks was on her side, and the Doctor still, despite everything he had witnessed already.

When they shut the garage entrance behind them, it did not help to make the unpleasant feeling in Sarah's stomach disappear completely, but at least it seemed to her as if it had been locked out for the moment.

Inside of the garage, everyone was busy – as was to be expected. Both of the mechanics were working on the team's vehicle, whose engine parts lay strewn about the garage floor and the Doctor went to join them almost immediately. In the other corner of the room, the navigator sat together with the co-pilot and they were in a deep discussion about the layout of the track. And then there was Robin Banks, who, just after he had entered with the two travellers, moved through a door into a small office that was connected to the garage. The office had a window and so, Sarah could see him picking up a wireless communication device not larger than the palm of a hand. He probably had to report to his uppers how he had just recruited the Doctor to help them.

As Sarah let her gaze wander around the garage, she realized that it might be best not to bother anyone while they were in the middle of something. At one side of the room there was a table with maps and promotional material for the racing team on it and, after she had tidied it up a bit, she found a place to sit while she watched the team work. It was not very exciting, to say the least, and whenever she dared to get lost in her own thoughts, the mystery of the other Sarah sprung up time after time. Like a voice in her head that kept telling her to do something. That there still _was something_ she could do, if only she would figure it out.

On one of his trips between the toolbox and the vehicle, the Doctor stopped in front of Sarah. "I might have underestimated a little the effects of what I did earlier today. They have only just received the replacement parts, no wonder they are short on time...", he told her rather casually while he hung his hat and coat on a rack filled with vehicle parts, canisters and tools. Instead of hanging his scarf as well, he just threw the ends over his shoulder so that they were not in his way while working. The Doctor was just about to return to the vehicle when he stopped once more and turned back to Sarah. "Listen, Sarah. I know you're still thinking about the sabotage business...", he told her quietly when they locked eyesight. "And you may continue the investigation if you like, but you mustn't leave this room, is that clear?"

"Whatever you say, Doctor...", she agreed, but kept herself from asking just how she should find another clue if she had to stay here, especially after the conclusion that it was already difficult enough to find out more about the identity of the real suspect.

Although he did not repeat his words concerning the uselessness of continuing the investigation, he was aware of the same thing and so, before he turned away, he placed the scanning device and the two red yo-yos on the table next to Sarah. At least she would be able to work with that. "Don't confuse them.", he told her while walking back to the team's vehicle. "The right one is mine – the original."

He might not have told her so explicitly, but Sarah knew that this was her free pass to play around with the scanner for a bit. It was not difficult to use at all. There were two buttons on its side, one for scanning and one for flipping through the readings already taken. After examining the device closely, she looked through the scanner's memory and compared the results just like they had done before. One never knew, maybe she would notice something now that they had overlooked earlier. But unfortunately, not in this case…

Sarah searched the garage for a piece of paper and a pen – which surprisingly still existed so far in the future – and began to take notes of the readings. First, she labelled the ones that were already there and then marked the differences by which she believed the Doctor had interpreted the results. One of the more distinct ones was the mostly flat line he had gotten from the inanimate yo-yos in comparison to the wave forms from himself or Sarah. After she had taken the scanner around the garage and scanned in some more inanimate object as well as mechanical tools and electronic devices, a pattern among the readings became clearer. The first part of the wave form apparently described an object's form and material structure, the second part described electrical impulses – such as the ones running through circuitry or the brain – and the third part described internal physical movement, like that of the heart or small machinery pieces. Out of the three categories, the first one was the one with the most detailed results, as Sarah found out after scanning two seemingly identical screws. Although she had to look close on the screen, the scanner revealed to her the difference which she would later detect as a barely visible scratch on one of the screws. Only the two red yo-yos the Doctor had placed on the table appeared with a perfectly identical reading on the scanner, which was further evidenced by a visual examination of the wood pattern.

 _It's no use_ , Sarah thought to herself. At best, she had just proven that the device was working very well, which in turn meant that she and the other woman were the same being. What crazy kind of principle could make that possible, she just did not know.

Not that much time had passed when she eventually let go of the scanner and decided to look around the garage again. This time, she took the Doctor's original red yo-yo with her, even if it was just a means of occupying herself. By now, the Doctor and the two mechanics had reinstalled some of the vehicle's parts, but also still had a load of work in front of them. As Sarah watched them, she saw Markus, the senior mechanic, slip while he was exerting force with a tool on a connection to the engine. There was a clanging, and then a hissing sound, and the machine released a blast of steam that had been under pressure. The Doctor closely avoided the hot air by pushing himself out from under the vehicle in time. "Drop that hydrogen wrench again and I'll tend to the thermal coupling myself!", he angrily threatened the mechanic, pointing the sonic screwdriver at him like a lecturing tool. But instead of awaiting an apology, he immediately went back under the hovercraft again.

Sarah had a feeling that the whole stress of the operation must have begun to get to her friend as well. It usually took quite a while for him to get upset. But he had been like this before already – just for a moment – when he found out that she had not stayed in the detention cell when she was supposed to. Maybe it was a little too much that was going on, with her doppelganger shooting at people and the sabotage, and the race trophy being the key to some sort of powerful weapon. In any case, she would rather not get between the Doctor and the mechanics now and so, feeling quite a bit sorry for them, she walked over to the collection of monitors stacked in front of the wall at the other end of the room.

Sarah stayed a while to watch over the navigator's shoulders to figure out what his job was. From the conversation he and the co-pilot were still in, she gathered quickly that the intergalactic races of Abraxas were not as straight forward as the Forumla One back on Earth. Although the racing track had a start and a finish line – both in the same place – there was no pre-set course for the drivers to follow. Rather than going once around the area, there were a number of checkpoints placed on the map, each of which needed to be passed by the drivers, but not in a specific order. Apparently, the checkpoints were not visible, but registered by some kind of highly advanced computer program. Fernando, the co-pilot, was discussing possible routes with the navigator, and furthermore what routes their competitors would take. Although they were in a conversation, Sarah noticed how the co-pilot kept shooting suspicious glances over to her and she quickly got the impression that he was feeling very uncomfortable with her listening in. She did not exactly dare to ask because what they were talking about seemed pretty important, but maybe he had these suspicions because he had been with the pilot at the time of the latest incident. And if not that, then at least he must have heard about her and thought there was some truth to it.

This unpleasant feeling of false accusations crept back into Sarah's mind and she quietly stepped back from the track surveillance corner of the garage.

Being left with little other to do, she sat back down on the table next to the closed garage entrance and played with the Doctor's yo-yo for a while. Minutes passed and she noticed the team manager Banks leaving the office and walking out through the garage's opening onto the safe side of the racing track. Not so long after that, maybe even less than a full minute later, there was a ringing coming from the corner where navigator and co-pilot sat. Fernando pulled out another one of these wireless communicators, clicked a button and began to talk to someone else other than his team mate. From the looks of it, the conversation he had with the other unknown person became so important so quickly that he decided to move into the manager's office, where no one could accidentally listen in on him. He managed to slip away more or less quietly and his colleagues just went on with their work. Sarah, however, who had nothing to do other than to watch them, took an interest in the matter. It might have been just because it seemed so important that her curiosity was invoked, but whatever the reason, she casually walked over to the office door and pushed it a few inches open.

"What do you mean, _no police_?" She heard the voice of Fernando through the crack. One sentence, that was all and she knew she was onto a story – and with her current mindset, she expected that it had something to do with the sabotages, too. Sarah positioned herself with the back to the door, so that she would hopefully look not too suspicious while at the same time she could easily listen to the co-pilot.

"But that is not possible!", he said with a voice that got angrier over time. "I will get you for this, do you hear me?"

Of course, in the pauses between his sentences the person at the other end of the line must have said something, but what, that was completely inaudible to Sarah.

"Yes. Yes… Why the one in the corridor across the Ibrimaxus box? All right! I'll be there!"

That was the last he said before Sarah suddenly heard footsteps and – alert as she was – she quickly moved over so that the co-pilot could not find her spying behind the door. She kept her back to him and pretended to play with the yo-yo as Fernando walked out. Only once she glanced over to the man, at the same moment as he left the garage. An agitated expression was on his face and he moved with great determination. The door had barely fallen into its lock behind him as Sarah rushed over to the Doctor on the floor and dropped to her knees to talk to him.

"Doctor!", she whispered, but still with enough force in her voice to make the matter sound urgent. "I think the co-pilot is being blackmailed!"

"Not now, Sarah!" He just replied, infinitely busy with reattaching a number of cables. It was quite obvious that he was not listening at all; He did not even look at her for the fraction of a second.

"This is important, Doctor!" She tried once more, but in the back of her mind she was aware that she had very little time to get him in on this. The co-pilot was on his way to meet this unknown person already.

"Can't you see I'm busy?" The Doctor answered as if he had just about noticed that she had said something at all. "I'm sure it's not any less important when I'm done here." His assumption was, quite obviously, wrong and so Sarah gave it up and moved away from the vehicle. She just about managed to suppress the desire to pull a face because of his negligence.

No one was watching when she carefully left the garage to follow the co-pilot. It was not that she had forgotten the Doctor's instructions already, but this might be the big chance to find out something new. Maybe even to get that one solid evidence they needed. If the Doctor was not available to do this, she was – any time!


	12. Third Time's One Too Many (Ep3)

When Sarah stepped out into the hallway she felt the unpleasantness of being watched again within only a minute. Her eyes quickly scanned the mass of people moving about to try and spot the co-pilot, but without success. Still, that was no reason to give up. Thanks to her listening in on the conversation earlier, she knew just about where he was headed so she could still try to catch up with him there.

With hasty steps she rushed down the hallway and had to watch out not to run into anyone on the way. She noticed the tall, feathered creature, who had been with the police officers, standing just outside one of the boxes as she hurried past. The beady black eyes of her followed Sarah with a suspicion so great it seemed to try to pierce the young woman's heart. Thankfully, she had a clear destination in mind or otherwise the creature might have successfully irritated her and Sarah would have seriously engaged in an argument to defend her position. However, again, this was just not the right time for it. The Earth woman slowed her steps as she neared the Ibrimaxus team garage and looked out for the corridor to the opposite of it. After she had walked up to it carefully and dared to peek around the corner, she found not a single person in sight, with the exception of a single man in his fifties, dressed entirely in black, who was walking out of the corridor into her direction. He had a strict looking face and his eyes seemed to spot her even though she remained half-hidden behind the wall. There was something ominous or even intimidating about that man and Sarah wondered for a moment if he had something to do with the case she was on – but discarded the thought quickly when she heard the voice of the co-pilot coming out of a room at the end of the corridor. It was too far away for her to understand the words, but Sarah was absolutely certain that this was the young man who drove for the Gabbo Beta team. She did not spare the stranger another glance as she walked down the corridor, but when she suddenly heard a muffled scream, she burst into a sprint.

"No! No! **N** **o!** **N** **O** **!** ", she shouted, afraid that the very same terrible thing had happened for the third time.

Almost falling over her own two feet she stumbled through the door at the end of the passage into a conference room. Straight in front of her, her eyes fell directly on the co-pilot Fernando leaning against one of the room's walls. He was covering with his hand a deep, scorched black wound in his left shoulder and he stared at Sarah with great dread in his eyes. If he could have backed away from her even further, he probably would have. The young woman was hurt deeply to be looked at this way, but despite all that stood against her, she hurried over to help the man.

"Get back!", the co-pilot tried to hold out a hand to stop her, but his voice was getting weaker and so were his legs. He was shaking with pain and struggled to remain steady by pushing himself against the wall."Get away from me…!"

"I just want to help!", Sarah called out and moved closer anyway. He was clearly lacking the strength to push her away forcefully, so she could approach him unhindered. It was almost impossible for her to look at the wound in the man's shoulder, the thought that she would be held responsible for such a cruel thing made her stomach turn – not to mention the smell of burnt flesh. Once she had gotten close enough, she tried to pull the man back to his feet by his good arm, but it was far too late by then. He slowly sunk to the floor, losing conscience, and because Sarah was lacking the strength to hold his weight up, she sunk down with him.

"Stay wake! Come on, you must stay awake!" Sarah shouted at the man, but his mind seemed to be too far gone to hear her. Although she was glad to find that the co-pilot was still breathing, she was not sure what to do next. The wound was not bleeding because of the burn and did not look lethal either, but the shock had been so severe that the man's mind had decided to shut down. It was probably better if she got someone who properly knew what to do now, like the medical team on site. Sarah jumped up and wanted to run back out, call for help, but before she reached the exit of the conference room, the Doctor suddenly appeared in the door frame.

"Here they are!", he called out and stepped into the room to make way for Robin Banks and a team of paramedics. While all of them rushed past the young woman to tend to the co-pilot, the Doctor just stood there and stared at Sarah, a very stern expression on his face. It was almost as if he had anticipated this to happen…

Sarah shot a glance back at the unconscious man who now lay slumped against the wall and the paramedics that were gathering around him. They too, tried to wake him, but to no avail. Judging by the words that were quickly exchanged during the first examination, at least everyone seemed certain that his life was not in immediate danger. When Sarah turned her head back to the Doctor, her insides were filled with a mix of emotions. On one hand, she was glad that no irreversible damage had been done, but she was also worried about the dread with which the mean had reacted to her and how quickly the Doctor had found her. By the time she finally managed to dare another look into her friend's eyes, he came towards her, steps steady and his gaze fixed on her eyes – like an unspoken command not to move a single inch. Although he was always looking down on her because of him being a good bit taller, this time there was something quite intimidating about him that actually made her feel looked down on.

"Why, Sarah? Why aren't you listening to me?", he demanded to know and there was most certainly an angry tone to his voice.

The young woman shrugged and shook her head. No way she would let herself be intimidated by the man she considered her best friend. "I could ask you just the same!", she stubbornly replied. It was not as if she had not tried to tell him where and why she was going!

"I have asked you to stay put and you just go and run off again and -", he continued by simply ignoring her counter argument, which Sarah just would not let him do.

" **I had a good reason to-!"** , she protested and interrupted him mid-sentence.

Or at least she tried to, because he suddenly shouted over her words.

" **-And that is exactly HOW THESE THINGS HAPPEN!"** The moment was short, but unexpected and intense.

His words were so loud and sharp, that they were piercing Sarah on the inside like knives and she could almost feel herself shrink by several inches under his look. All of a sudden, she had not the slightest intent of arguing any more. Instead, she was just staring at him with wide eyes, shocked a bit and deeply sad, that he would use the force of his fury against her like this.

"Sarah, listen to me...", he ordered her. Thankfully, the moment of red hot anger had passed, but his voice was still very strict, even commanding. "You must listen to me!"

Sarah did nothing else, she could not have turned away even if she had wanted to. His intensive stare seemed to bypass her physical self and to hit her mind directly. She barely even heard him when he told her to concentrate, so overbearing was the force on her thoughts. A quick move of his hands and the Doctor touched Sarah's temples, all without breaking his stare for even just a second. It was as if someone had flicked a switch in the young woman's mind or maybe the thing a canary might feel when a blanket was thrown over its cage. From one moment to the next, her conscience shut down, went directly to sleep; Just like that. There had not even been the time for her to feel her body give way to gravitation.

==== ==== The Doctor ==== ====

The Doctor caught his companion with a motion so swift that she was never in danger of collapsing to the floor, and then proceeded to lift her up into his arms. His expression was still so sincere, almost blank when he turned and began to carry her away.

"My co-pilot's been shot at, too!" Robin Banks exclaimed, desperate more than ever. The man, who stood somewhere behind the Doctor, just could not believe the malice that was pointed at his enterprise – and who could blame him?

"Doctor! **Doctor!** Where are you going?" Although he was merely calling out at first, the steps of the short manager were soon heard coming after the traveller.

The Doctor did not answer and also did not go through the trouble of turning around to face him. He stopped for a moment. That's as much as Banks got for a reply. And if the team leader had any feeling for a situation at all, he would have known what an annoyance he was at the moment.

"My co-pilot's been knocked out; We're ruined!", he shouted after the Doctor, because quite obviously, he did not have that feeling.

"Then find a new one, will you!?", came the answer from a man still bristling with anger. "It's time you learnt to deal with your own problems, Banks!" The Doctor continued to carry Sarah out of the room, most likely hoping that he would not be bothered with the team leader's petty little troubles again.

Eventually Robin Banks, too, noticed the woman hanging in his arms – it was hard to overlook, anyway.

"W-What happened to her…?", he asked, suddenly sounding confused to what was going on.

When the answer returned to him, it echoed through the hallway. The Doctor was already out the door. His face could not be read as he said: "I had to put her to sleep."

==== ==== Sarah-Jane ==== ====

It could have been minutes, but also hours later when Sarah's mind flicked back on like a light. She tore her eyes open, jolted out of unconsciousness by the side of her brain that still wanted to protest against… she was not even sure against what any more. But she remembered getting into an argument with the Doctor and wanting to tell him that she ran after the co-pilot because he had been lured away from the team into an ambush. Maybe through the use of blackmailing, or some other shady threat. She had never delivered that argument, though.

Sarah allowed herself to reassemble her thoughts for a bit and looked around in the meantime. The room was brightly lit by a lamp on the ceiling. In front of her stood a desk. She herself lay in a thickly upholstered chair of which the backrest was set to lean back as far as possible and someone had placed her feet on a box, which from a medical point of view was better for her blood flow. After a few more seconds, she recognised the room as Robin Banks' office. While there was a bit of relief that she had not been kidnapped to be put into some sort of doomsday device, she was also still wondering how and why she got here. The last thing she remembered was the Doctor telling her to listen to him. And that she always did – always had done. Why did he even ask for it? Sarah sat up and pressed the palm of her hand against her forehead. There had been a feeling of what she would describe as mental suffocation just before she had passed out. Something or someone just had made her mind stop working… and that's when it clicked.

The sudden realization made the young woman gasp for air. This had happened to her before – her mind taken completely by surprise, by a friend! But back then, it had been for another, much better reason!

She could not believe – did not want to believe it and yet she did – because it had happened!

Sarah jumped back to her feet and stumbled, not safe yet after coming to, as she ran to the door and forcefully knocked it open. A fiery rage had begun to burn in her mind.

The sound of the door being slammed open had made everyone in the garage look up and stare at her. This included the Doctor, who was just wiping his hands clean from the machine's engine oils. Surprise was written all over his face – he seemingly had not expected her to be awake just yet.


	13. When Friends Fight (Ep3)

" **You used your hypnosis on me!"** , Sarah loudly and openly accused him as she stomped towards the tall man like an oncoming storm. **"Are you** **OUT** **OF** **YOUR** **MIND** **to just switch me off? I'm not one of your** **stupid** **little** **tools** **!"** Her shouting had the attention of everyone in the room and that was okay with her – they should see that he was not the impeccable genius most people saw in him!

"Calm down, Sarah!", the Doctor demanded, with clearly little understanding to why she was so upset. Judging by how fast, he too, turned angry again, he must have been thinking that she was unreasonably making a fuss about this. "I had to do this! You've disobeyed me twice and you saw what was the result of that!" He pointed towards the garage exit, although there was nothing to be seen, it was more of a symbolic pointing out to the two pilots that were under medical treatment right now.

" **It's not my fault!"** , Sarah yelled back with a voice that seemed to get more high-pitched the louder she was. It was painful, having to defend her actions in front of him. It felt like her anger was scorching her from the inside and his anger was scorching her from the outside. "I had a good reason to run after him; He was lured away, I wanted to prevent the disaster!" Finally, she had been able to speak it, but adding ever more to her emotional pain, the Doctor did not seem to care.

"If you would have stayed put, that disaster would not have happened in the first place!", he accused her. "You keep doing the same mistake and if I cannot trust you to listen to me-"

" **Trust!"** She was interrupting him mid-sentence again, although she knew how much he hated that. A bitter thought had just hit her mind that was the most painful of them all and she was fighting against the stifling feeling and eyes daring to tear. Apparently she had become more trustworthy to him when she was asleep!

" **You're the one to speak of trust!"**

As usual, the Doctor did not allow himself to be interrupted in the first place and they ended up shouting over each other for a few seconds. She had merely thrown him off course for a short moment, so his voice was simply gaining another level of volume when he kept speaking. **"If I cannot trust you to listen to me,** **you** **leave me no choice but to make you** **! I cannot handle more than one crisis at the moment** , I thought you understood that! **You don't want more people to get hurt, do you?!** "

This time, it was not a short and intense moment of fury. This one lasted and showed to Sarah that instead of being some sort of spontaneous overreaction – he was serious this time. And when she had thought that the one time he lashed out verbally had been painful, this was so much worse. Her body was shaking slightly as she felt her mental and emotional self crumble. She did not want to have an argument – least of all this one and it seemed as if her body too, was rebelling against it.

"I don't…!", she replied with a broken voice that had suddenly gotten quieter again, albeit just slightly. Almost had she given in and averted her look, feeling now quite certain that she could not keep this up much longer with the emotional pain building up on the inside. But despite this, she sullenly looked up into the angry face of the Doctor and firmly stated: **"But you** **think I** **do;** **You've lost your faith in me!** You really think it was my fault!"

" **Nonsense, Sarah!"** He just kept going. He did not seem to notice at all what he had done to her already. **"You are perverting the facts! I said that there is a pattern to the assaults, not that it was you who committed them!"** Although his words made it look like he was giving in a bit, he was still speaking with the same upset tone and so, whatever he said did not really matter to Sarah any more. What was the difference between the one thing and the other, anyway?

" **I don't understand you!"** , the short girl shouted back into his face and shook her head wildly, **"If you say they are assaulted because I am not where I should be, it's the same deal!"** She was biting her lower lip and finally felt her eyes getting watery, just as she had feared it would happen. Not wanting to be seen like this, she turned away from him towards the garage exit.

"It's not. I still believe that you are not the one who pulled the trigger!", the Doctor continued to argue. A bit of the anger to his voice had finally faded, but he was still unpleasantly certain in his statements.

Sarah did not feel like replying to him. Whatever she said, he did not really understand, did he? Was that how much their trust really meant to him? Could he not see that this was not about the assault itself any more?

The Doctor was getting impatient waiting for a counter argument. "Sarah, at least look at me when I'm talking to you.", he asked of her and she could feel him, his presence, as he tried to get closer to force himself back into her field of view.

Fine, should he have it! The young woman lifted her head and turned to face him in a quick, almost sudden motion, revealing her heartbroken expression to him only once. **"I'm not talking to you any more!"** , she called out and lifted a hand to push him further away from her – or to punch him in the chest, maybe – except that all of her good values were keeping her from actually doing it. That was what she was really like; Could be feisty in the moment, but never harmful – especially not to those she considered her dear friends… or had considered her dear friends. A single tear ran down her cheek when she took some hasty steps towards the garage exit. **"I'm leaving!"** , Sarah declared, sniffling, but her decision was final and firm. **"And don't you dare to stop me!"** Should he try to use that hypnosis trick on her again if he really meant it!

But she did not even wait to hear a reply to that, she just went out into the hallway.

Behind her, she heard the Doctor as he rushed to the door she had just left through, knocking it back open with force.

" **Fine then!"** , he shouted after her, **"** **You stubborn, silly girl** **who never listens** **!** **See how far you will get without me!"**

Aside from the first hurried steps, Sarah did not run away from him. She just walked, because he was not coming after her anyway. Although one part of her wished he did and that he would make up for the emotional pain he had just caused her... Of course, that did not happen.

As she slowly made her way through the hallway and out of the building, she held her arms crossed to stifle the shiver that still ran through her body. She was too proud to cry, but she cried a little nonetheless, silently and with her head held low. For once, she did not care in whatever way the crew members of the racing teams were looking at her as she passed them, but was still glad when she finally made it out into the open air and felt real sunlight on her skin again. That trust between her and the Doctor had been such a natural, wonderful thing that had kept amazing her every time they made it through a dangerous situation. But now it felt as though reality had brought her crashing down from a height of joyful emotions. At times she had thought they worked so well together that she could read his mind and that he was always reading hers – but in truth it was more like it had been just now. He was not human; He did not understand her at all. How else could he just abuse his superior skills like that? Sarah kicked a small stone in front of her feet away. She was a live, emotional being. At least she deserved to be talked to before he took a decision that concerned her! Not that he had announced what he was going to do the other time when he had used his hypnosis to save her from suffocation… But that had been an entirely different thing, with her life at stake and everything!

...Had it not?

Her memories were contradicting with the picture that her upset mind was trying to paint of the man. Too often had he saved her life already, too often had they talked and laughed, and been silly together. He was concerned about her; had always been. Never before had he done one single thing that would have harmed her in any way. At least she could not think of one. Sarah was torn deeply between the stubborn side of her brain that wanted to be the one who had rightfully led the argument against him – and the other that told her she should not have doubted his good intentions for a second. Because, most likely he had not doubted hers… he had just done what he thought had been necessary at the time.

 _An easy argument_ _for him_ _to hide behind!_ Sarah argued with herself in her own thoughts.

By the time she had begun to aimlessly wander the colourfully highlighted streets of Marbarett, the young woman felt a little easier again. Sarah even realised now that another argument with the Doctor would most likely go nowhere if she would not calm down first; think of something else for a while until her mind was working rationally again. The Doctor probably needed that time, too. If anyone knew it, then she did: That he was not perfect, he overlooked things, and he was acting rash sometimes, just like her. Could this all be a big misunderstanding that, maybe, in the end, turned out to be entirely undeserving of their friendship? One part of Sarah-Jane definitely hoped for it. She could not see herself crossing the Doctor from her list of friends. Or in any case, she did not want for it to come to this.

Her feet carried her through a narrow passage uphill and she was still sniffling a little, but thankfully her shaking had stopped some time ago already. Even her eyes had become a little itchy, now that they were dry again. At this point, she really would have liked to talk to someone else. To her aunt, maybe, or Harry, whom she considered dear, despite having travelled with him for a relatively short amount of time only. But he had the advantage of knowing the Doctor while she would never be able to fully explain the matter to aunt Lavinia. However, how would she contact them? She was on a far away planet in a maybe even further away future… The streets of the city seemed so cold suddenly, when she realized just how alone she was without the Doctor at her side.

A delicate smile appeared on Sarah's face when her sight fell on a familiar object in the distance. It was that kind of smile of someone who had just spotted a glimmer of hope in the dark.

And hope, that was the very thing she stood for: The TARDIS.

Just down the next street sat this blue, slightly battered police box, looking absolutely out of place as usual – and with the current position of the planet's suns, she was covered in a red and yellow light, tinting her purple and green respectively.

Sarah had no idea just how she had made it back to the Doctor's bigger-on-the-inside space craft, because she had not actively looked for it, but she was glad to find it sitting there anyway. Just like bumping into an old friend by accident. Naturally, she continued to walk up to it, even though the box was most likely locked. However, the Doctor always told her that the TARDIS had a mind of her own. Maybe she would let Sarah in and there, at least she would have some peace and quiet. Closing her eyes and hoping for the best, the young woman pushed at the door of the police box – and to her surprise, it actually opened!

She stepped in happily, but the smile on her face began to fade when she saw the inside of the TARDIS. It was the same old console room as always – the first one, that was completely white with the big circles in the walls and the hexagonal console with the time rotor in the middle of it. But the lighting was off-putting; It was tinted orange-red and seemed a bit darker in general than how it usually was. There was no way of telling what exactly gave her that feeling of inauspiciousness, but the inside of the time machine seemed to be filled with an aura of malevolence so thick it could have suffocated a man if it was part of the air consistency.

Sarah did not need to think twice about it to know that something was very wrong and with fearful eyes she immediately turned back to leave. But the door on the inside of the TARDIS had already closed behind her. Afraid of getting trapped inside, the Earth woman jumped over to the console and pushed the lever she knew opened the door – or it usually did so – except this time. She tried once more, when a voice suddenly interrupted her doing.

"Aha! Right on time."


	14. Enter, The Master (Ep3)

It was the voice of a man – and a voice not entirely unknown to her. She had heard it once before, when someone had unlocked the door of the detention cell and had told her to find the Doctor. When Sarah looked up, the figure who just entered the console room from the depth of the TARDIS also wore a face that she already knew. It was the older man with the strict facial features and the black clothes she had encountered in the corridor earlier. His expression was very sincere, and probably even more underlined by the short beard that framed his mouth. The first thought Sarah had about his appearance was that he was not one for smiling or laughing much. And the second thought she had was that he was the source of the ominous feeling…

"Sarah-Jane Smith, I presume?" Although he formulated it as a question, the stranger did not seem uncertain at all about his assumption. He moved further into the room and around the console closer to Sarah, but with every kind of alarm ringing in her head, the Earth woman slowly backed away from him.

"Who are you and what are you doing with the Doctor's TARDIS?", Sarah demanded to know. Despite her latest differences with the Doctor she was still very willing to defend his rights.

"The Doctor's TARDIS?" The man looked at her as if she had insulted him. "What makes you primitives think that he is the only one to own one of these?"

"One of…?", Sarah began to repeat his words, but then she understood. "You're a Time Lord!"

But then, why would his time machine look just like the Doctor's? They were not build to look like 1950's British police boxes from the start, or were they? Sarah's mind was racing, trying to understand what was going on and where she had ended up in. Another UNIT report sprung up in her memory – a report about a man described very much like this one before her, who had tried to hand over the Earth to an invasive alien force before being stopped by the Doctor. "Please don't tell me you are the one known as the Master…!?" Sarah shook her head as she spoke, hoping for a second that it was all a nightmare and that she still a had a chance of waking up.

The stranger actually did smile when he heard her assumption about his identity, but it was not a pretty smile. It was the triumphant sneer of a mastermind villain. "So the girl is capable of deductive reasoning. A basic skill for a human to have..." He nodded towards her. "Yes, I am, indeed, the Master."

When she was about to grasp just how dangerous this man was, she moved sideways to try and get the console back in between her and the stranger. "Well; Master or not!", she defiantly skipped the announcement of his significant name, "Whatever your evil scheme is, I won't let it happen!"

"I beg to differ.", disagreed the Master, very much unimpressed with Sarah's empty threat. He continued to walk around the TARDIS console with his hands casually folded behind his back. His posture was the one of a military leader or a strict teacher, nowhere as relaxed as an ordinary man.

"You won't understand this, but all of it has happened already – and at the same time all of it has yet to happen.", he mysteriously explained to Sarah.

==== ==== The Doctor ==== ====

"Trouble in paradise, eh?"

It was the voice of assistant mechanic Inis Mora, who joked about the scene that had unfolded in the garage earlier. She leaned against the team's vehicle, which was now pretty much complete and in top shape again – and a good hour before race start, too.

The Doctor, who stood next to the woman – he was just done with putting the engine cover back into place – shot her an angry glare for a reply and she quickly got the hint.

Inis held up her hands defensively and shrugged as she said "Whoopsie, not my business!" before eventually backing off.

Now that the repairs were finished, one could expect the ATRV to run even better than before, but unfortunately the racing team was still faced with the problem of finding a replacement for the drivers. Anyone could co-pilot, that was easy, but in order to drive one needed a racing licence. Coincidentally, the Doctor owned one, thanks to his last visit to this planet – but that had been in a previous life and whether the licence was still valid was another question entirely. However, if he was to mention this to the manager, Banks would most certainly offer him the position. Probably a bit too gladly, too. In any case, it would be better if the GB1 team leader got someone who was properly licensed and trained for this.

In total, the Doctor's mood was still pretty bad, as Inis had just experienced. He had plenty of things to occupy his thoughts with – but then again, maybe the number of problems itself just added to his grouchiness. So the time traveller did not talk much as he went through the garage back to the table where Sarah had sat before the assault of the co-pilot had happened. He collected his hat and coat and began to search around for the oscillation scanner that his companion had left behind. While doing so, he necessarily had to look at the things that laid on the table and that was when he noticed that one of the red yo-yos was missing.

The Doctor had placed both of them specifically next to each other; The one which he had considered to be the original to the right, and the one that had to be the duplicate to the left. It was the original one that had vanished. Where had it gone? If his sight had not deceived him, he had noticed Sarah playing with it out of the corner of his eye. The Doctor picked up the remaining red yo-yo and weighed it in his hand while he thought about the other toy's whereabouts. She must have accidentally taken it with her when she had run off.

His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to take in a lungful of air that was suddenly very much needed. The thing he had overlooked this entire time stood plainly before him now. Puzzle pieces were rattled into place as his mind raced and worked out the details.

"I am such an idiot!", he called out and angrily smacked himself on the forehead. "Why didn't I realise it sooner!?"

The entire crew looked up when the man with the silly scarf suddenly darted towards the exit. "Sarah!", the Doctor yelled, although she was long since gone.

" **SARAH!"**

==== ==== Sarah-Jane ==== ====

"You're right, I don't understand this.", Sarah agreed to the Master. It was probably some of that highly complex time business – but as the Doctor had once said; she did not have the right mindset to think in four dimensions. "But it still doesn't matter", she claimed, "Because I won't be a part of it!"

The human leapt forward and tried to push the lever again that was supposed to open the TARDIS' internal doors. But despite her hope, the Master's space craft refused to obey her. Since she had already feared it might not work, she tried to back away from the ominous stranger quickly, but when the Master locked sight with her, something frightening happened. It was like a weight had been placed on her mind. A weight so heavy that the commands her brain was sending to her body did not get through.

"You mustn't refuse, Miss Smith.", the Master told her calmly, although his eyes were piercing right into her soul. "Your assistance is of vital importance to my plan."

Sarah's eyes widened with fear. Mental suffocation… he was trying to hypnotise her! Wasn't there anything she could do to defend herself? In her mind, the young woman clung to that realization and tried hard to imagine pushing the Master's thoughts away. Although the technique seemed similar, there was an entirely different feeling that spread within her when the Master tried to take over her mind compared to how the Doctor had done it. It was difficult to describe, but if she had to visualise it, then the Doctor's thoughts had come in through doors that had been already open from the start while the Master was just breaking in and immediately tried to forcefully take the control away from her. Had Sarah not experienced a similar attempt so recently, the moment of surprise would have been on the Master's side and he would have had an easy time suppressing her thoughts. But as it was, she managed to struggle and even got as far as to make one of her feet move backwards from the dangerous Time Lord. That small victory, however, was not enough for him to give up. It was merely a reason for him to increase the force on Sarah's mind and she felt an almost painful sensation of her psychological being becoming separated from her body. It was such a strange and sudden feeling that her remaining counter force simply fell away, giving him the moment of puzzlement he needed to tear down her last defences.

In the end, she still had her thoughts, but they were put away behind some sort of mental cage. The experience was frightening, but whereas her body would usually begin to shiver with fear the sensation remained in her head only.

"It was a good effort for one of the Doctor's companions, but it was not good enough.", the Master concluded and broke the eyesight with her now that the telepathic connection had been made. Despite of what she hoped, the cage around her mind did not loosen. "Stand up straight.", he commanded Sarah, who was still leaning over the console after her failed attempt at opening the TARDIS' doors.

The young woman did not want to. It might have been a very simple and mostly pointless command, but for the even simpler reason that he was a villain she refused to – and was promptly punished for it. It felt as if someone had stuck a nail into her brain. Sudden, and painful, and too much of both to keep refusing the order she was given. While her mind fought down the twinging, her body seemingly reacted out if its own and Sarah took proper posture despite not wanting to. She could not see it, but her face was twitching and her eyes looked frightened while in her mind she made another attempt to break the control; To push away and break the Master's cage, but the backlash, again, was too severe to keep trying. As she suffered through the fit of pain and began to recover, for a few seconds there she heard the sound of drums in the distance…

"Don't be so hard on yourself.", the Master told her. Sarah could barely turn her eyes to follow his movements as he walked around the console again. When he returned to her field of view, he had picked up two small, silver objects in the shape of coins. One of them, he pressed against his temple and then stepped closer to her to attach the other one to hers. "You will find that this makes things much easier for both of us.", was all that he explained.

It was not just a coin, it was some sort of telepathic transmitter – because the second it was activated, Sarah felt as though the world had gone silent around her and her body numb. She was free of the pain, but the expression on her face, too, had become entirely blank, not quite unlike a white sheet of paper ready to be written on.

The Master went and came back again, this time with a laser pistol like the Skanish' police forces use – except this one had a blade attached to the top of it – and pressed it into Sarah's empty right hand. She fearfully recognised the weapon. He went on to examine her, not in the way one would look at a person, but in the way one would inspect a tool to discover faults. Obviously, he did not like the fact that the transmitter was visible on her temple and brushed some of her hair over it. Internally, she wanted to recoil at the touch, but not a single notion of this made it through to her body. There was no backlash this time, it was simply ignored completely.

Then, the Master discovered the glittering star sticker on Sarah's blouse and he grimaced at the sight, annoyed.

"I won't let my plans be ruined by one of his childish games."

With a swift motion, he tore the sticker off.

==== ==== END of EPISODE 3 ==== ====


	15. Cut Off From Oneself (Ep4)

==== ==== EPISODE 4 ==== ====

When the Master ripped away the star sticker which the Doctor had placed on Sarah to mark her as the original girl, even she finally realized what was happening to her. A weapon in her hand and the Master controlling her mind to do things she would never dare to think of doing; Very little was left to separate her from the woman she had despised for her crimes – merely the cruel acts themselves.

When the Master considered Sarah ready for her first mission, he simply pushed her out of his TARDIS and into a room somewhere in the racing building complex. The Master did not accompany her, but because of the transmitter that was still attached to Sarah's temple she could hear his orders in her mind even clearer than spoken words. They were more like thoughts of his that beamed past her brain and she could easily imagine his voice to them if she wanted to.  
He sent her body to the garage of a team she did not know the name of – but its entrance was decorated with colourful drapes. At the time, there was no one around and so she could enter unhindered, only to discover the team's vehicle sitting there all by itself. The Master's instruction was to open the engine cover and place the muzzle of the laser gun at a very specific spot before firing a single shot – but the cover sat very tight and Sarah, although locked away in her own mind, felt her body struggle to push it open. Even as she used the knife on her weapon to pry it open with, it did not budge. The very weakness of her own arms suddenly turned out to be a good thing, because it made it simply impossible for her to obey the order...

Disappointed in her, but not finished by far, the Master send her straight to the Gabbo Beta garage instead. Surprisingly, there was no one around, either. Not even the Doctor – not even as much as his hat and coat on the storage rack.  
Unlike the attempt before, the locks on the engine cover of their vehicle were easier to open and Sarah was able to fire the well placed shot which caused the casing of an internal component to crack in half. With a mild shock to her conscience, she realized it was just the same damage the Doctor would have to repair later. Or… was it earlier? The Master had already called out for her to return to him when – just in the moment she stepped outside of the garage – a tall, feathered creature came running towards her. This creature too, she recognized from another time… and only now the young human fully understood why the female alien had held such an especially high amount of suspicion against her. The feathered being had almost caught her in the act of sabotage and was now chasing Sarah out of the building. Only once she made it into the hustle and bustle in front of the public entrance, the alien fell behind and gave it up eventually. There were too many people, and with all of them moving towards the building, it was rather difficult to manoeuvre back out of the crowd.

When the Master finally guided Sarah back to his TARDIS, it did not look like a police box any more – but rather like a large locker instead, backed against a house wall and looking absolutely unsuspecting.  
But there was no time for her to wonder about it – he just forced her to step in immediately.

She was able to see the Master in person again while he flicked some switches and entered new coordinates into his TARDIS' console. Before Sarah knew it she was on to the next mission already. This time around, the Master followed her to the door and they stepped out of the time machine into the garage of the Ibrimaxus team together. Although she would have preferred to back away at the first sight of the other woman, she was forced to remain still as the Master approached herself quietly from behind – or rather, her past self, who stood there and tried to question the team on her own after the Doctor had stepped out for a moment. Sarah remembered this very scene still in great detail. The Ibrimaxian pilot was smiling that mean grin - but it had not been meant for her as she had originally thought – it had been a silent agreement with the Master. And it was also the Master who took out a small vial and opened it up close to the face of her past self. A gas streamed out of the vial that was almost visible in the air.

From there on, it happened just like it was recorded in Sarah's memory, except that she was now watching it all from a different angle. Her past self began to pass out very quickly, yet with her last strength she turned around and opened her mouth to call for help. The Master intervened just in time to make sure that she was not heard and would not notice the presence of him or her so-called double, either. Eventually, after her past self had fallen unconscious, the criminal Time Lord dragged her away and out of the present Sarah's field of view which was locked to look straight forward by the order of his mind.

"Brace yourself for the next trick.", she heard the voice of the Master – his actual one, not his thoughts – advising the pilot before he left the scene. Unfortunately, he was still not gone far enough, because the next command already reached past Sarah's mind, driving her to obey him.  
" _Wait until the Doctor arrives – then shoot at the pilot's leg."_ , it came this time in the form of the Master's voice speaking in her head. _"Make sure he doesn't get the chance to catch you afterwards! You_ _ **must**_ _return to me_ _at once_ _!"_

" _No, no no!"_ , she internally screamed back at him. Oh how she wished to be the woman that he was dragging away right now, totally unaware of the harm that was to follow. In fact, that had been her in the past… but now she was here and already committing the very first act that would end up driving cracks into the solid bond of trust between her and the Doctor. At the same time, the Ibrimaxus team who was gathering around her tried to act fearful – although they were not really scared of her. It was all a game they had arranged with the Master, and for a hefty sum too, she would imagine.

Her body lifted up the gun to the level of the black-scaled men's chests. She could feel her legs standing firmly on the ground, much more determined to do this than her mind would ever allow her to be. Sarah's thoughts were racing to figure out how she would be able to prevent the shot from being fired and tried several times again to scratch and tear at the cage that severed the connection to her body.  
But the Time Lord criminal only seemed to enjoy how she struggled and suffered – almost as if he was waiting for her to come up with a new plan to get out, which in turn would keep him entertained.

Maybe it was a minute, maybe less, but eventually, the inevitable happened. The Doctor came in through the door and saw the scene. Sarah's body was not allowed to turn her head, but she heard his voice calling out her name. It was in that precise moment that she fully realized she had travelled back in time by several hours only.

" _Doctor! Doctor, help me!"_ , she screamed in her mind, but her body did the exact opposite of what she wanted. Sarah turned around and pointed the weapon at her friend. When her mind was struck by the fear of the Master forcing her to fire a shot at the Doctor, the Sarah that was reduced to nothing but thoughts lashed out more fiercely than before, calling to countermand every action that was in process.

She desperately hoped to reach out from behind her cage and break through to the one and only who could really help her now: The Doctor. He knew that this was not what she was like and he even said it while she was facing him, but behind the scenes it was all in the hands of the Master and that he did not know. The entire scene which now unfolded turned out to be a set-up meant to fool the Doctor and it worked so perfectly at first. But then, something curious happened…

The force the Master exerted on her mind faded by a margin. Not much, but the young woman, who was still trying to tear through the walls with the little psychic force she had, was suddenly able to turn her own head back to the Doctor like she had actually wanted to. The words she forced out were not the ones she had hoped they would be, but they were better than nothing considering the Master's control tightened again almost immediately.

She had told the Doctor she was sorry. And yes, she was.  
For what she was about to do and that she could not stop it.

And it happened just like it was supposed to. Sarah deliberately shut down all her struggle and even managed to close the visual input from her eyes to her brain in the moment her body took the shot at the man's leg. Her head seemed to pound with pain from her unsuccessful attempts of breaking free and the only way to escape from it was to withdraw further within. Whatever happened outside, whatever her body did, she barely noticed any more – but she could easily imagine that the Doctor chased her through the hallway as she ran away, before eventually, she would step back onto the Master's TARDIS right next to where the villainous Time Lord had dropped her past self off.

How could she be so certain of it...? That was exactly how the Doctor had told her it had happened, and the rest she could piece together herself...

" _Move,_ _Miss Smith_ _– we are on a tight schedule!"_ , commanded the Master.

It was probably not good to stay this way, deep within her mind, but she sort of liked having stepped into the background of her own self. If something like a place, in the sense of the word, could actually exist in the mind, it was cold and dark and silent, but at least she was not forced to witness what her body did under the Master's influence. Was there really nothing she could do about it? The past had already been written, even though it was just in the process of being formed. The future could always be shaped; That she had learned when the Doctor had fought Suthek and showed her an alternate future.  
But would the same rules apply to the past?  
Oh, if only the Doctor was there to help her! Suddenly, she was so sorry for having had that argument. Sorry for having doubted him. If at least she had not run away, she might have never ended up like this…

A flash of light zapped through the dark in the corner of her mind she had retreated to. A sign from the outside. Was it another shot of the laser gun in her hands? Sarah would rather not dare to find out... That was until, suddenly, her head was flooded with the Master's thoughts, plenty of sharp sounding and short orders – and very precise ones, too. A sort of mild panic lay hidden underneath all of it. Something must have gone wrong for him!

Curious to why her oppressor was starting to panic, Sarah opened herself back up to the outside, slowly and carefully. As it turned out, her physical self was getting breathless from running away once more. She was somewhere outside of the racing building and had just exited an emergency door. The Master made her turn her head to check on her surroundings and there, the young woman discovered the Doctor rushing towards her again. For the evil conscience which overshadowed her own the intervention of the other Time Lord had come seemingly unexpected and he hesitated for a short moment to send the next instruction. At the same time, Sarah recognized that very moment and situation as another glimmer of hope!

" _Doctor! It's me!_ _I_ _t's really me!"_ , she desperately tried to shout, but just as the other times the order remained ignored by her body. Judging by the serious expression on the Doctor's face, he did not believe that she was the real Sarah at all. In the last fraction of the second before the young woman turned around to finally dash away, she noticed him raising the scanning device. What followed next was a sudden shock of her body and she almost fell; the Doctor had grabbed her by the wrist to stop her flight abruptly.

" _The meddling fool! He is about to ruin it all!"_ It was the voice of the Master, almost shouting this one among many other thoughts. _"Pull free, you petty little girl, I order you!"_

Aside from the pain in her head that was growing more intense the longer she tried to deny the order, there was soon another pain, a burning in her wrist. It was the result of how forcefully her body tried to get away… not the Doctor's fault for holding her arm so tightly.

In order to free her from his grip, the Master – while looking desperately for another option – seemingly drew upon another memory to make her shout out; To demand of the Doctor to let her go. It was not unlike her to shout this way, but she had really meant to address the Master with such words.

Sarah was shocked when she saw how her best friend reacted to being treated like a villain. The Doctor's serious expression suddenly fell and he looked emotionally hurt, as if he had just heard her cry for help – the cry she really had wanted to get out the entire time – but with the situation that he was in, it must have seemed to him that there was no way he could help, because he had been the one to harm her.

" _It's not your fault!"_ , the weak mind of the young woman tried to tell him. Although she knew so well that he would return to her past self and almost immediately check on her wrist. She could not have cared any less about her wrist right now! In fact, she wished that for once, he would use more of that strength of his to disarm her and knock her out. To use some Venusian Akido or whatever he called it. Just anything that would free her from the Master's control!

Eventually, the Master resorted to the only last chance he had to get Sarah free; He commanded her to swing the blade of her firearm at him. Thankfully, the Doctor was quick to notice the change in tactics and dodged both swings in time, although eventually he was forced to let go of her since the only other alternative was to lose his hand.  
However, as it turned out, at least luck was still on her side. The Master did not know that Sarah had still been keeping the Doctor's red yo-yo in her pocket and as she came free from the Doctor's grip with a jolt, the toy fell clattering to the pavement. Even though she knew that they had wondered much about it – maybe there was still hope that his present self, or maybe rather – his future self – would still be able to figure out the meaning of this clue...

Not quite unlike a yo-yo herself, her body returned to the Master once again.

When she entered his TARDIS, he glared at her in a very displeased way, making Sarah fear that he might consider to dispose of his tool a little earlier than anticipated. Because that's what she was to him; Not a living being of her own, just a tool… and to think she had accused the Doctor of treating her this way. At the time, she has had no clue just how bad it could get.

"That was close, very close.", the Master stated. Since he probably knew that he could not hold Sarah herself responsible for it, he averted his look and went back to adjust his TARDIS' controls before he continued talking. "I think I rather not have the Doctor around the next time… Let's see here." Judging by how quiet he turned for several seconds, he was pondering for a while, but his thoughts remained so far away, that Sarah had not even the chance to spy on his plans. "Hm. A trick, a few empty threats…", the Master contemplated. "I can separate the co-pilot from the rest of the crew, and maybe lure her in as well."

Quietly, Sarah's mind retreated again. Not as far as before, but just enough to distance herself from the things that were to follow while at the same time she was still able to vaguely identify what was going on around her body. What would happen to the co-pilot, that she knew already, and she was also aware that, just as the Master had wanted it, the Doctor would not be around. Neither would her past self be. But then, what would happen after that? Was that the end of her usefulness? Or was there one more crime she had committed and did not know of yet? That dark place in the corner of her mind became even colder when the thought crossed her mind that this could be the end of her. On a distant planet, in a distant future, the only friend that had been around she had pushed away and no chance of saying her last good-byes to anyone. If Sarah would have allowed it, wallowing in self pity would have been both easy and welcome, but she was still holding on to that tiny glimmer of hope in the distance. She fed it with all of the emotional and mental pain she had to endure. At one point, the Master's control would have to slip. Even if it was the moment he would decide to part from her.


	16. She Eats Time Lords For Breakfast (Ep4)

In a desperate attempt to save her own sanity, Sarah had blocked her senses from reaching her brain in the moment she had gone to face and shoot at the co-pilot's shoulder. And she almost would have missed to open them up again… When she finally did, her body surprisingly had already found its way back to the Master. By now it was not just her wrist that was burning up with pain on every movement, but a certain light tiredness had also settled into the rest of her physical self. The Master was just asking a little too much of her and Sarah; She was almost proud of her feeble body, which – in a sense – had tried to resist the orders in its own way. Would the madness finally end now?

"You've done very well, Miss Smith.", the Master praised the Earth woman. For once he was speaking face to face to her and he even tried a smile, too. Sarah did not like to see him happy. "I dare say this might be one of the finest paradoxes ever created. This time, I have outdone myself in such a way that even the Doctor will be forced to acknowledge it." He was walking around Sarah and the console as he spoke, full of pride about that horrible scheme he had put together. What did he care what the Doctor thought? After all, had not all of this just happened to see them suffer? The Master was a personal enemy of his and known through UNIT records for going to great lengths to realize his mad visions. There was nothing Sarah did not think him capable of.

Except gaining the Doctor's respect.

Surprisingly, the Master decided that Sarah was worth of being talked to after all.

"As for you, you should not worry about your future.", he told her casually.

Of course, Sarah was worried that he might decide to kill her once it all was over, but the fact that this was not the most prominent thought on her mind proved that he cared very little about her opinions. Either that, or he did not want to acknowledge that she still held hope in her heart. Because that was what she tried to think of as much as possible.

"Your usefulness has not found its end yet.", the Master continued, "There is one last task left for you to do."

Sarah did not want to hear whatever horrible thing he had chosen for her, but there was little she could do to prevent him from forcing the order on her mind.

" _You will destroy the Doctor."_ , the Master's voice echoed in her thoughts.

A shiver ran through Sarah's body when he said it and she liked to imagine that it was her emotions recoiling at the order, when, most likely, it had been just a side effect of the fatigue. The very idea however, was horrible enough to draw Sarah's conscience back to the front row and gave her the power she needed to rebel again. _"You're mad!"_ , she internally shouted at the Master, _"You're absolutely mad!"_ If he thought he could drive her this far, then he was very mistaken. Or so she liked to think, because her struggles against shooting at innocent people had been futile until now. But something was different this time – this had not happened yet! It also was not part of the Master's great paradox, so it might just be a future that could be written – or rewritten if necessary!

Because the Master was not paying much attention to her, Sarah pushed against the force of his mind that kept her cut off from her physical being. There was little she could do, and painful it was again as well, but at least she could force him to listen to her by making herself a nuisance to him. _"You will not force me to kill, do you hear me? I'd rather die!"_

His reply came in the form of a low chuckle, almost as if he still enjoyed her rebelliousness.

"Hm. Maybe you will...", he eventually answered, verbally, and walked back out of her field of view.

Sarah could still hear his steps echoing behind her when the TARDIS' doors to the outside world began to open. Into the time machine strolled the man with the madly curled hair and the silly scarf Sarah had so desperately hoped to see again. He stopped abruptly when he realized that this was not his space craft and looked around, surprised if not confused at first, but eventually his expression changed to show how shocking the realization was which hit him.

The young woman's immediate reaction, to call out his name and run towards him, remained unanswered by her body, but that did not keep her from trying to reach out. _"Doctor! Here! I'm over here!"_

Although it must have been impossible for him to hear her, Sarah's call was finally answered when the Doctor's sight fell on her unmoving body and she noticed how he just opened his mouth to call for her – at the same time the Master reappeared in the corner of her eye.

"Doctor! How good it is to see you.", the older looking Time Lord greeted him.

A snarky grin spread on the Doctor's face, but not for long. The way he looked at his arch enemy was a mix of disgust and anger. "Of course!", he replied loudly, "Out of my list of people I did not want to be involved in this, it just had to be the number one spot!"

Quickly, before the Master could react to his comment, the Doctor added: "What have you done to Sarah?" And with it, he had changed his tone from one moment to the other and Sarah noticed him lowering his eyebrows, obviously trying to intimidate his arch enemy.

But the Master remained unimpressed.

"A slightly more elaborate mind trick, that is all.", he casually answered to the question and pointed at the coin shaped transmitter attached to his temple.

Sarah noticed the Doctor's eyes widening slightly. "This has nothing to do with the Keller machine, has it?" Quite honestly, she knew very few details about the previous encounters they have had, but judging by the Doctor's reaction, he must have seen a similar device once before.

"Not in the slightest.", the Master explained to him, but his voice made him sound rather disappointed at the other's false guess. "I use this kind of transmitter for telepathic connections these days."

As if he had given the Doctor a new clue, Sarah's time travelling friend finally walked over to her. His steps were fast paced and the look with which he attended to her was full of worry – if not even guilt. Surprisingly, the Master allowed him to step closer without enforcing the command he had announced before, even though Sarah was still pushing against the cage in her mind to try and lift as much as an arm. Anything to move towards the Doctor and to show him that she was still there.

But it was so painful, the nails digging deeper into her brain…

" _Doctor! He wants me to…!"_ ,she tried to warn him, but she found herself barely able to form the thought.

The Doctor stopped in front of her, leaning slightly forwards to get a better look into her face and his water blue eyes were moving rapidly as he scanned Sarah's mind-dead, blank facial expression for any sign of brain activity. She was not sure if he was able to see or to understand what it was like on the inside. That it hurt on so many levels, the total lack of control and the feeling of acting against one's principles of peace; One's existence becoming meaningless under the oppression of another mind that was just so much stronger.

" _Doctor…!"_ , Sarah desperately cried out, but her non-verbal voice of thought he did not hear. Otherwise there would have been at least some form of reaction visible on his face, no matter how little. The young woman longed to grab him by the sleeves of his frock coat, but after how long she had tried to act now, the pain was beginning to become too much for her. After being forced to realize once more just how powerless she was, Sarah slowly sunk back behind the walls in her head, both depressed and mentally tired. This time she actually would have liked to cry if only her body would have allowed her to.

The Doctor lifted a hand and carefully brushed away some strands of her hair to uncover the coin-shaped receiver of the Master's thoughts.

"If I was you, I would not try to remove it.", the criminal advised Sarah's friend in regard to the device. She felt her hope sink a little when the Doctor looked away from her to listen to him. "The device is adjusted in such a way that it will send an electrical shock of ten thousand volts directly into her brain if it is struck or removed by external force of any kind." Even she knew that ten thousands volts could fry a human brain with ease...

After hearing this lecture by the Master, the Doctor turned around and walked several steps away from her again. Sarah did not like it at all, her torch of hope moving into the distance and leaving her in the lonely dark of her mind. Yet at the same time, she noticed by the way he avoided the Master's gaze and paced about, that his mind must have begun to work on the solution to her problem.

"You really have thought of everything this time, haven't you?", she heard him wondering aloud as he stood with his back turned to her.

"Your interference was only the most obvious course of action.", the Master argued, but then put on an arrogant smile. "But yes, I have thought of everything, indeed. Otherwise you would not have borne witness to a full circle paradox." He mentioned it in the most casual way possible, but only Sarah knew just how much he had wanted to get a reaction from the Doctor.

But when her friend and mentor heard the Master's boasting, he chuckled first, then shrugged. "If this is pleasing for you to hear I will tell you that this might be the most well crafted class C time paradox in the history of Gallifrey, but the results of your plans are far too appalling to me to appreciate them." He said it a little fast, almost as if he was trying to mock the Master.

Although it had been little more than a notion, the criminal had noticed it well and glared at the Doctor for a second or two before his mood lightened up again. "Of course. You are not seeing the full picture.", he scoffed and countered eventually. "Miss Smith has only been a scapegoat and a means of keeping you distracted while I work on my true goal – this year's Etabonite trophy."

"You're planning to steal it?", the Doctor took a guess and got another highly displeased look in return.

"My dear Doctor, just how much of a common scoundrel do you think I am?" While at first the Master had merely seemed disappointed to be misjudged by his old enemy, he was slowly getting upset about it now. "I intend to _**win**_ it – although not necessarily by fair means, I will admit." His last addition had come much more quietly, effectively

allowing him to emphasise on the bit about _'winning'_. As he started to pace around his own TARDIS' console again, the Master began to reveal more of his doings to the Doctor and Sarah. "My plan did not originally include you, but when I noticed your arrival on this planet, I could not resist the temptation of bringing you and your little companion into the game."

" _A game! Ha!"_ , Sarah thought angrily. It suited the criminal to think this way. She would have almost turned her mind away from the Time Lord's conversation, because she did not want to hear more of the Master's opinions, but then the Doctor suddenly exclaimed something so excitedly that her mind was brought forward by the sheer force of curiosity.

"Aha! I see! Yes, so that's how it is!", her friend called out and shifted his weight from one leg to the other while lifting a finger to underline his sudden enlightenment. His reaction was almost too expressive to be true. In fact, it seemed he had suddenly lost all of his worries, because a big Cheshire cat grin just appeared on his face. It was that kind of grin that made Sarah always feel happy and light-hearted, no matter how dire the situation seemed to be. He had gotten a flash of inspiration; She could feel it!

"Well, I hate to inform you, but there is a fatal flaw in your plan!", the Doctor confidently told his arch enemy. "You should have never forced your will on Sarah – her mind eats Time Lords like us for breakfast!"

" _My mind does what…?"_

This bold claim had come as a surprise to the young woman, who had no idea yet what the Doctor was planning.

"Nonsense; she is but a miserable human creature, weak like all the others that you so unwarily keep picking your companions from.", the Master immediately dismissed the other Time Lord's strange assumption. Although his voice was calm, he moved up and down the console, irritated. "Minds such as ours are naturally too great for one of her kind to conquer."

But the Doctor's smile was unwavering and so was his surprisingly good mood. "You see, that is your first mistake; Every creature is an individual and has the right to be treated as such.", he lectured his adversary. "You may not simply project your assumptions about the human species down on to a single person." There was a pause left on purpose while the Doctor took off his hat, folded it and stuffed it into his coat pocket. "How do you not know that Sarah is building up her strength in the background?", he raised an eyebrow as he tried to lure the Master's interest again.

"Doctor, spare yourself the embarrassment and stop this childish charade.", his opponent merely demanded, still absolutely uninterested to consider the Doctor's suggestions and also clearly angry now as he hit his own space craft's console. "If you are going to propose more empty threats, at least make them plausible!"

"My threats are always quite plausible, I assure you." The Doctor shrugged and opened his arms as if he was unable to understand the accusation.

"Enough of this now!", the Master almost interrupted him before he turned to the young woman. "Miss Smith!"

He had not said it explicitly, but the order was already there. Sarah noticed her body stiffen suddenly, and a wave of fear swept through her mind. With one precisely directed, swift and confident movement, her arm went up, pointed at the middle between the Doctor's hearts and pulled the trigger of the laser gun that was still in her hand.


	17. Two Minds As One (Ep4)

It clicked. The Doctor's head shot around, a frightened and disoriented expression written on his face.

But nothing happened.

Infinitely amused by her friend's shock, the Master let out a mocking laugh. "Ha ha! You are in luck, Doctor. The gun has been discharged already.", he explained with a nod in Sarah's direction. Although he phrased it this way, she felt that luck had nothing to do with any of it. "You will find that I have no intent of killing you off this easily. Your dear Miss Smith, however, is still bound to carry out my order by any means possible."

That was the point when she really understood why that gun of hers had a blade attachment in the first place, and why he had not ordered her to shoot when the Doctor had almost stopped her escape earlier. Her body took an offensive stance, weapon raised high to strike and she slowly moved forward. The Doctor kept watching her every movement, wary of what was to follow.

From one moment to the next, Sarah lunged out, striking the bladed side of the gun at her best friend. In her head, she was terrified of hurting him, but strangely enough, she was also almost certain that the Doctor would be able to deal with this kind of close range combat. He had done it before in similar situations plenty of times and so her hope was backed by her knowledge of his skills.

He took a quick step back and dodged her first swing. The woman attacking him brought the weapon around in a fluent motion and advanced closer on him to cross the distance he had gained before striking again. Another move just in time, the Doctor stepped sideways and let the blade slice through air before suddenly reaching out and grabbing first the arm that held the weapon, then her other one, too.

Although Sarah's body had somewhat recovered from her previous missions of being chased and having to fight, it did not hold the force to counteract against the Doctor's grip. Unlike the other time, he now held both of her arms in front of him and did not allow her another chance to swing the bladed firearm at his neck.

"In fact, I think I have made it almost too easy for you.", the Master surprisingly decided to continue explaining. Judging by the direction his voice came from, he had moved further into the background to let the action unfold in front of him. "Well, Doctor? What are you going to do? Will you allow her to fulfil the order or will you spare her the suffering she has to endure? All you need to do is to remove the transmitter."

Sarah noticed the Doctor's gaze wandering to the spot at her temple where the device was attached to her. He looked a little distressed and gritted his teeth. He was not seriously considering the Master's suggestion to kill her!?

"This is too cruel, even for you!", the Doctor told his nemesis while trying very hard to keep Sarah's arms still. The Master's command had just begun to drive her to the first attempts of breaking free of the hold.

"It is time you learnt that, sometimes, the only option left is the cruel one."

Sarah's body tried to pull away, her sight shifted and sometimes she lost the Doctor from her view, but he had not lost his grip yet. After another unsuccessful attempt of breaking free, she noticed that he was seeking eye contact with her.

"If this is what you want to teach me, you shouldn't have left me alternatives.", he told the other Time Lord.

Once he had found a couple of seconds in which Sarah had not turned her head away from him, her body surprisingly began to calm down a bit. The order to kill him was still very much present, she could feel in her muscles how they wanted to move and to strike. It must have been something about the way the Doctor had locked his gaze with hers that now made it easier for him to further keep her from attacking.

"Your efforts will be in vain, Doctor." The Master's voice suddenly sounded distant as he spoke his warning. "An expert hypnotist like myself would not go to such lengths of using a transmission device had I not anticipated that you would try to override my orders. You will find her mind locked away safely and that only I hold the key."

" _Give it up."_ The very last words had come non-verbally, echoing through Sarah's mind past her own thoughts, although they clearly seemed to address the Doctor.

She was still staring into the eyes of her friend when everything suddenly seemed to burn up into white, to fade away like an overexposed image on a film negative during development. A new wave of fear crashed over her mind as she realized she might be passing out, but that was not exactly what happened. Her physical self was still out there, with the Master's order firmly planted into her muscle memory. Her body, too, was still struggling and she could feel that, but it had gotten a lot more distant than before. It seemed to her as if the push of an external force had thrown her conscience further back into her own self – so far that the input from the outside world barely reached her any more. Now that place in her head of which she had wondered if it ever could be called such, felt quite physical in its own right. Although she knew it could not be possible and that it all was imaginary, there was a solid ground beneath the feet of a figure that was very much hers. In front of her laid an empty white void that stretched into vastness, but when she turned around, the white faded into a pitch black darkness to her sides and back. It was cold and she felt that the wall of the mental cage had to be very close by. In this imaginary place, she carefully held out a hand to feel for its presence and was surprised to find a smooth and invisible surface an arm's length away in front of her, instead of the spiked iron bars she had imagined earlier. She did not like standing with her back to the darkness. There was something ominous about it, as if a creature could jump at her out of the cover of the shadows. Yet, at the same time, she felt that she may not look at it, or else the fear could paralyse her mind and emotions – and then: What was left of her then?

With her hands, she was still inspecting the invisible wall, when she suddenly felt a warmth in the distance, and it was coming closer, too. Out of the whiteness beyond the wall, like stepping out of a thick mist, the Doctor appeared, coming towards her!

" _Doctor!"_ , Sarah called out happily and she saw him open his mouth to call back, but there was no sound.

It didn't matter much, though, because his face alone told her just how glad he was to have found the real Sarah. He stopped very short in front of the glass-like wall that she was pressing both of her hands against, and the companion quickly realized that he was the source of the comforting warm feeling. With the cold darkness still lurking behind her, she had that sensation of sitting in front of a bonfire on a cold summer's night; The part of her that was facing the fire was pleasantly warm, but the cold kept sending shivers down her spine.

With big expectant eyes she followed every little movement of the Doctor, as he tried to speak again, and by Sarah's imagination it must have been one of the usual things he would tell her. Something like _"Listen to me!"_ or maybe _"Keep calm; Don't worry!"_ \- but of course she was worried: She still could not hear his voice! It must have the wall between them, because unlike her, he seemed very certain that his voice should be audible to both of them.

Sarah shook her head at him. _"I'm sorry, Doctor. I cannot hear you!"_ Hoping that he would understand the gesture, she covered her ears for a second before placing her hands back on the wall. If only she could reach beyond it...

Maybe she was inaudible to him as well, because he kept trying to tell her something. This time, she had not the slightest idea what his words could be. There was a sympathetic if not regretful look on his face as he moved even closer to the invisible wall that separated them. He lifted a hand and carefully brought it to the level of Sarah's right one, to touch the smooth surface in the same spot on the other side. Almost by instinct, she spread her fingers to match his, but then looked back at him expectantly. There was no explanation to his doing, he just repeated the action with his other hand, before he took a breath and closed his eyes. Sarah was almost waiting for something magic to happen, to feel the warmth of his presence burn up and singe the Master's conscience, maybe. But no, all that the Doctor did next, was to rest his forehead against the glass, causing some of his unruly brown curls to be flattened in the process. At first, Sarah wanted to ask what he was doing, but in a strange way she felt that she already knew, although she lacked the words to describe what it was or where the notion came from. The young woman, too, breathed out slowly as she tried to rid her thoughts of worry and fear, then mirrored his action on the opposite side of the wall. With her inner eyes closed to this imaginary place she leant forward to touch the glass-like surface. Surprisingly she did not have to guess at all where her friend was; His presence was so strong that the wall between them suddenly felt paper thin.

Yet the wall was still there.

Sarah noticed a thought passing her mind, in the way the Master's thoughts often had passed her cage, but remained unreadable unless he wanted them to be. This specific thought, too, was more of a notion than something that could be translated into words, but she tried to imagine a voice speaking anyway, because it had to be the Doctor trying to reach her. She could feel it: It was a positive, encouraging thought.

" _Try, Sarah! Try!"_

A breath that she must have been holding escaped her – maybe even her physical self – when the Doctor's voice, as she had imagined it, suddenly turned audible in her mind. _"_ _Doctor!"_ , she called back, glad that it worked.

" _There's a good girl!"_ , he praised her. _"_ _See?_ _You're stronger than you think!"_ There was something so positive about his thoughts that Sarah understood he would be smiling if she could see him.

But the brighter the light, the darker the shadows got that were seeping into her mind from the Master's side.

Sarah felt herself grimace when she attempted to fight a mix of emotions. _"But I'm not stronger than him! I tried_ _several times_ _, and it hurts,_ _Doctor,_ _so bad_ _!_ _I think he rather wants me dea-_ _"_ She did not finish the thought, because she heard the Doctor shushing her, and not just through their telepathic connection, but probably in reality, too.

" _Sh_ _h_ _!_ _Don't_ _you worry so much!"_ , he instructed her. _"You just did_ _n'_ _t know how to use your strength against him,_ _that's all_ _._ _You can break free from the inside, just listen to me!_ _"_

Sarah tried very hard to focus on the Doctor's thoughts and the optimism coming from him. There was no point in trying to fight down the fear of the dark that kept creeping up on her, so instead she tried to ignore it.

" _That transmitter the Master uses is a bi-directional tool. That means that he can force his will on you, but you can also force your will on him."_ , the Doctor quickly explained to her. _"_ _The only reason he thinks he's safe is because he believes in his superiority, but he's no better than any other Time Lord!"_

" _But he IS a Time Lord!"_ , Sarah counter-argued. _"I'm sure you can take him on, but me, I..."_

" _I can't take him on, Sarah, this wall is impenetrable from the outside. But you're in, so you will have to do it."_

It was a strange feeling when she suddenly realized that his optimism had not come from the confidence he had in himself, but the confidence he had in her. Her thoughts went into several directions at the same time when she tried to imagine just how she should mentally overpower a Time Lord. A being that was naturally greater than any human.

There were doubts mixing into her emotions again, but the Doctor kept encouraging her. _"Go on, Sarah! Don't be hopeless!"_ , he sorted out her thoughts for her, _"Imagination is the key; You can think of him just as inferior as he thinks of you."_

Would that really work? Could she really turn the tables this easily? The least Sarah could do was try. And although she knew she did not have the skill or the wits to win against a Time Lord, she knew she had higher moral values than the Master, and this she could hold on to. It seemed right to think that she was superior in the way that her principles were stronger and better than his. And he, he was a criminal! Someone so mad that he would use people like chess pieces and did not care about physical or emotional damages. What if he had made Sarah kill someone instead of just hurting them? She would not have let him, rather would she have sacrificed her mind!

Maybe that's why he did not do it! Was the Master really scared that if he pushed her too far she would find a way to reverse the mind control? _"That scoundrel; Petty villain!"_

The Doctor's thoughts had become quieter, but in response she still noticed a thought. Not well formed, but just a signal to her, a glad feeling of his that she had understood it now.


	18. His Incredible Little Human (Ep4)

When Sarah tried again to push against the cage that held her trapped, she could feel right from the start that her attempt was much better directed and that there was a lot of force behind it. The force of positive thinking, as it seemed. Her cage suddenly seemed to have become almost too small to hold all of her emotions and all of her thoughts. Instead of merely trying to break through a cage, her mind was lifting it up now, bending it outwards to trap whoever was on the other side. The Master's dark and oppressive shadows scattered with a surprising ease at first, until he began to realize what was going on.

" _That's not possible!"_ , the Master's voice suddenly rang out and a counter-force was established from the other side. The shock of being taken by a supposedly inferior being, however, was still very much in effect. If she had not known the Master better, she would have said he was frightened. _"You mindless primitive! Back down at once!"_ , he tried to command the human girl.

" _Oh,_ _S_ _hut up!"_ , Sarah called back, entirely unimpressed by his threat. The process of turning the mental cage outwards had merely become a little more trying with the Master's counter force, but it was in no way painful and the Doctor's optimism was still adding to her own confidence that kept building up further and further. Everything proved that she was on the right way, she actually was overpowering the Master's mind! Sarah even noticed stepping into his world of thought when the shadows got thicker and the sound of drums reappeared, getting louder as the cage slowly closed around the Master's conscience. At one point she was not even entirely sure if the pounding was in her head or his.

Eventually, he had to realize that the impossible had happened: A human had invaded his mind. The Master's thoughts were countless, ice cold and squirming, as the space between the cage's walls grew more and more narrow. Among them, there was a certain, new fear as well. By its intensity it was easy to guess that even the Master had never thought that this scenario could turn out to be a nightmare of his someday. Just one more push, and with a loud clanging that echoed through all of their minds, the cage fell shut, and then...

Everything seemed to happen at once.

Reality was catching up with Sarah's conscience, as if time itself was being fast-forwarded: The wall between her and the Doctor, which was also the wall that had separated her from her physical self, fell apart – shattering as one would imagine it – and the telepathic connection to the Master, too, was severed. Instead, she was reminded of gravity and her strained wrist and all the other underwhelming feelings one could only get from a feeble human body. Not all of these first impressions of awakening were bad, though. She had not thought of it when her mind was in that imaginary place, but in the split second just before her legs gave in she noticed she had actually stood with her forehead touching the Doctor's, eyes closed, and her hands linked with his.

Had not all of it happened so quickly, Sarah might have been able to keep herself from falling, but as it was, the Doctor stepped in to catch her by the arms. He pulled her back to her feet immediately, supported her and Sarah, who felt like having been scared awake by a nightmare, took a hold on his coat while she recollected her senses.

"Sarah!", he joyfully called out her name and when she raised her head, she looked straight into his eyes. He was beaming the proudest smile at her she had ever seen. It was as if he had witnessed a small miracle happening.

"You did it!"

Sarah chuckled and returned a tired smile. Yes, she had! She could barely believe it still, but she had not only regained control of herself, but actually conquered the mind of a sinister Time Lord criminal. As she casually brushed a few strands of hair out of her face, the transmitter just fell off of her temple and clattered as it hit the ground. Her smile grew a little wider and she nodded at her friend. The joy of having performed the seemingly impossible was setting in now, too.

"Yes! Yes, I did!"

As if mimicking her movement, he nodded with her, and then laughed out loudly, just as he unexpectedly wrapped his arms around her and lifted her off her feet – only for a few seconds to spin her around once, but that was just how happy he really must have been. "That is amazing, Sarah! Amazing!" He squeezed the breath out of the young woman before dropping her back down just as suddenly as he had picked her up and Sarah almost stumbled again. She could not help but to laugh with her crazy alien friend, still, once she had regained her balance.

"And we've taught the Master a very valuable lesson today!", the Doctor triumphantly announced and then looked over to his arch enemy. He lifted a finger as he gave his final lecture. "You will never underestimate a human again!"

When Sarah turned her head, she noticed the Master standing stiff, straighter than usual even and his face was locked in an expression that showed both shock and stress. Almost completely still, like a statue. He more than deserved to feel like she had for once, but Sarah also knew what a horror it had been and did not wish for this state to become permanent. Criminals like he was were meant to be kept under lock and key, anyway.

"Will he stay like this?", she asked the Doctor.

"Not for very long, I assume.", her friend replied with his sight still set on the unmoving figure of the Master. "But I hope still long enough to firmly inscribe this experience into his memory, eh?" His last addition had gotten a bit of a sharp edge to it. Sarah knew that usually the Doctor was not one to celebrate his victory in front of enemies, but this time the Master must have done a serious mistake.

She would not argue that. It served the Master right for what he had done to her and let her suffer through.

"Doctor…?", Sarah turned back to address the tall man at her side and the Doctor looked at her with his head tilted and a smile on his lips, like he did so many times.

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry I shouted at you and ran away.", Sarah confessed, "I should have known that whatever you do is for the best."

"Oh, Sarah…", he stretched her name as he was trying to find the words. "I'm sorry, too. For not realizing sooner and for having been too impatient. Let's call it even, shall we?"

The woman bit her lower lip in an attempt to suppress a smile, but could not hide it completely. With that sorry and sympathetic look that he displayed, how could she not?

"Yes.", she replied and nodded. In thought, she promised herself she would never doubt their trust again – although really, she never had doubted it in the first place. It all seemed more like a sudden outburst of confused emotions, the way she looked back at it now.

The Doctor laid an arm around her shoulder and invited her to leave just in the moment in which there was a movement on the other side of the console. With a very sudden motion and a loud gasp for air, the Master broke out of his paralysis, brought a hand to his temple and ripped away the transmitter. He stumbled a step back, disoriented – or maybe the device had decided to zap him with a shock of electricity – but then the Master lunged immediately at the console. Two swift presses of buttons and Sarah recognized the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing.

Instinctively, she took a leap forward to try to stop the villain, but the Doctor caught her by the arm before Sarah had any chance to reach the console.

"Wait!", he called. And it was good that he did, because when the Master's TARDIS left, it left without them.

The console room disappeared around them and abandoned the Doctor and Sarah in one of Marbarett's streets.

"He's escaped!", Sarah exclaimed and immediately turned back to her friend, "Where will he go to next?" The Master was one that should not be allowed to roam free, that much she had gathered. But had they foiled his plans for good?

When the Doctor looked at her he had an excited twinkling in his eyes and soon, a big grin spread across his face. "I think he will attempt to win that race!", he told her – in a happy tone for some reason that she had not quite grasped yet.

"What do you say, Sarah, shall we beat him to it?"

He was suggesting that they participated in the race! This time, Sarah did not even contemplate her answer.

"There's nothing we can't do!", she confidently replied.

Apparently, the Time Lord really liked that answer, because he laughed as he stepped past the young woman to rush off.

"Well, then! What are we waiting for? Come on!" With a clear destination in mind, he ran away and left Sarah to chase after him out of her own accord.

He was going so fast that she could barely catch up to him. Even after everything that had happened today, he was still full of energy. And Sarah, too, felt motivated by him. If the Master was clever he better realized that the two unlikely friends had come out of his trial even stronger than before.

Together, they made their way downhill through the city back to the building complex of the racing site and from there into the Gabbo Beta team box. Unlike all the times they had crossed the hallway before, things had gotten very quiet now. There was barely anyone left running about the place except for the Doctor and Sarah, and the majority of the racing team members were sitting in their garages to monitor the race. Through the garage openings to the track, the cheering of the audience could be heard and the vehicle engines. It was as if all of the turmoil of the preparations had moved outside now. A clear sign that the real race start was merely minutes away.

When Sarah passed by all the other teams, she noticed that most of the vehicles were already out or in the process of being moved to the track. Just in one garage, the car was still sitting there and all of the crew members were gathered silently in front of their monitoring screens. It was not the kind of silence of people staring at something in nervous excitement, but the silence of a team that had just given up completely. Everything that could be said had been said already. It was the Gabbo Beta team.

It was so strange to see them like that after all the times the two travellers had entered the garage and none of the crew members could be bothered much with their problems since they all had been so busy. But this time, an absolute first, everyone looked up as the Doctor and Sarah came rushing through the door.

"What's with the long faces, everyone?", the Doctor skipped his usual greeting and instead blinked at the crew members, perplexed.

"Doctor!" Robin Banks, the team manager, rose from his chair and walked over to them. Although he was a little surprised to see the two travellers again, he was more calm than ever before now. As calm as only one could be who was certain that things could not get any worse. "I'm afraid to tell you that all of your support has been in vain. I just had to inform the racing management that we were forced to withdraw from the race. There was no way of hiring a replacement pilot on such short notice...", he explained.

The Doctor was quickly grinning again, as soon as he noticed that the news he brought would turn their situation around completely. "Ah! Then you probably want to countermand your withdrawal!", he happily declared and then proudly told him why, "I have found the perfect replacement for both your pilot and co-pilot!"

Robin Banks face looked so surprised as if he had just completely forgotten how depressed he actually was.

"You did? Really? Where are they?", he demanded to know and attempted to look past the two time travellers.

But the Doctor did not tell him. He just kept grinning at the shorter man and waited for him to figure it out by himself. At first anyway – but then he got impatient and showed him a hexagonal plastic card with a logo on it that Sarah had seen around the race building a few times already.

Banks jaw fell open and he looked as though he could not believe the item to be what it was. "But...that's a racing licence!", he figured eventually, but took another few second before he made the connection to the Doctor and called out: "You!?" He was seemingly unable to understand that the Time Lord was now all too willing to fill in the most important role in his team. "But why now all of a sudden; What made you change your mind?"

The Doctor nodded in Sarah's direction, the grin still on face. "She did."

"I did?", his companion wondered aloud.

"Yes, you did."

Something clicked in Banks' mind. "Then you want her to be your co-pilot?", he asked. Just by looking at the man Sarah knew he was thinking intensively about the how and why and what of this decision, and whether it mattered, too.

"Come on, Banks!" The Doctor prompted him and just walked past, further into the garage. "You don't have much of a choice, or do you?"

"No, I really don't.", the manager said quietly with a perplexed look still on his face and only a second later he actually snapped out of his puzzlement. Robin Banks turned abruptly around to his remaining crew members. "Why are you still sitting around? Get back to work, we have a race to win!", he suddenly barked at them and clapped his hands. "Will you bring these two some fire-proof clothing?!"

From one moment to the other, there was movement in the garage again.

Sarah followed the Doctor as he went out of the garage towards the racing track and stopped there to watch their competitors for a moment. Among the vehicles and teams gathered outside stood the Ibrimaxus team, almost ready for starting. With them was a man dressed in a khaki coloured racing overall who just took off a helmet to reveal his face. Even from the distance, Sarah recognized the stranger as the ill-natured renegade Time Lord;

The Master.

==== ==== End of EPISODE 4 ==== ====


	19. The Race Starts (Ep5)

==== ==== EPISODE 5 ==== ====

When the new pilot for the Ibrimaxus team lifted his helmet, a face was revealed that Sarah already knew and in the moment of recognition she felt hate and fury spreading within her again. It would have almost ruined her good mood, had she not just defeated the villain in one of these mind games that he was so good at. His aura of intimidation had no effect on the human woman any more.

"It's the Master!", she whispered.

The Doctor's reply was quiet just the same. "I know.", he said, before raising an arm and waving over to his arch enemy with a grand gesture. **"Good luck!"** , rung his booming voice across the start-up line. The smile on his face was a confident one, but by all the common sense left in him, it could not be meant for the Master's encouragement.

Sarah jabbed her friend in the ribs in an attempt to stop him. "Don't wish him good luck, Doctor!", she hissed to the older man at her side, "He's too big for his boots already!"

As he spoke, the Doctor turned back towards Sarah, looking still so infinitely optimistic about having the upper hand. "After the shock you've given him, he'll need a bit of luck to stand any chance."

Luckily – or so she thought – the Master did not react to the greeting gesture of Earth's great defender. Although he glared over to them once, he eventually went after his own business again. Sarah still did not like the look in the Master's narrow eyes, even though she had lost her fear of the man during their earlier encounter. But her triumph over the Master could not completely put aside the memory of how he had taken over her world of thought in the first place. One glare of his, directly into her mind… She tried to glare back at him, now that she was full of self-confidence and thought of herself as stronger than him, but although she was concentrating, for some reason she no longer felt the force of her own mind like she had at the time when she had been in that imaginary place with the Doctor.

When Sarah noticed how her time traveller turned around to walk past her back into the garage, she tapped at his arm to regain his attention. "Wait…!", she interrupted him, but then waited until he locked eyesight with her. "When I overpowered the Master's mind… what did you do? I mean, aside from the encouragement. There was something else, wasn't there?" Sarah should have noticed right away that it had been too good to be true.

"The credit is all yours, Sarah.", he answered quickly. Judging by his raised eyebrows, he seemed a little surprised that she asked, almost as if he had not expected for her to doubt the achievement.

But she was cleverer than that. She assumed that he had just wanted for her to feel great and special, but in reality, things were never quite as easy. If it really had been her, and her alone, she should have been able to feel the same force of her own mind now and be able to threaten the Master with it. And even if she still did not know how to use telepathy, at least she would have expected to notice _something_ during her attempt to glare back at the villain.

Sarah cocked her head and gave her friend a sceptic look.

"Why, I just evened the odds for you!", the Doctor finally gave in and shrugged. With a sleight of hand, he conjured up a small, flat and blue shimmering crystal out of the young woman's hair – though she did not believe that he could have hidden it there from the start without her noticing. As the Doctor opened his palm to present the crystal to her, Sarah's eyes grew a little wider.

"That's a Metebelis III crystal, isn't it!?", she gasped. Her friend had lost his last life returning one of these precious stones to its place of origin! Blue crystals from the planet of giant spiders had a special property which heightened the senses of anyone who looked at them – or a touch might be enough in some cases – and because of that they were very valuable to creatures with lesser minds. Like humans, for example. In fact, as small and flat as that particular stone was, it could have fitted easily into the Doctor's palm, so that neither she nor the Master would have noticed its presence during his attempt to free her from the mind cage.

"That's not a crystal!", the Doctor stubbornly insisted and quickly hid the stone in his clenched fist. Of course, he had to remember what trouble the last piece had caused to both of them, yet he wanted to hear nothing of it. "It's a Metebelis III _**pebble**_ at most. No one will miss it."

He tried to get away from the conversation, quite literally this time as he took another step into the direction of the garage, but Sarah did not let him go. "Doctor?"

He stopped once more. "What else, Sarah?"

"Thank you, anyway."

In reply, he smiled and mouthed the words _"You're welcome."_ without actually speaking, proving that even without a magical crystal to enhance Sarah's mental abilities, she was still able to read his mind to a minor degree. However, before she could say anything in return, he audibly added "But don't tell the Master!" and placed a finger over his lips.

"Here you go, you two!"

They were more or less interrupted by the voice of the senior mechanic Markus, who just joined them in front of the garage to hand fire-proof jump suits in the team's colours to each of the two time travellers. "You have approximately 10 minutes to get ready while we bring the ATRV to the start."

Sarah would admit, she was not a great fan of the blue with black and red stripes scheme but she understood the necessity for racing conform uniforms and was not one to discuss aesthetics over usefulness anyway. The young woman went back indoors and as she pulled the jump suit over her regular clothes, she found it uncomfortably warm and just a little tight. But it would do. Not that she had much of a choice anyway. Together with the garment came also a helmet, a separate visor in the form of red, frameless glasses and a pair of gloves. Sarah was still fitting one of the gloves over her fingers, when she heard steps behind her, and, without further announcement, the Doctor suddenly stuck his head into her field of view.

"How do I look?", he wanted to know briefly and stepped back for her to examine him.

Sarah glanced over his new outfit quickly and, because she was not much of a fashion expert, jokingly concluded: "I'd say you've grown by another few inches." The way the jump suit accentuated his figure, it made it seem as if the man consisted mostly of legs.

When he heard her remark, the Time Lord signalled her to wait while he took a helmet and pressed it over his mop of curly brown hair, effectively decreasing his height again by the aforementioned inches. Although he could not see much now that his eyes were covered by forcefully flattened curls, he was still grinning widely and Sarah could not help but to giggle at his display.

"Yes, that does it!", she replied with chuckles between her words, barely able to keep herself from laughing out heartily.

The next time Robin Banks rushed past them, just as he had done plenty of times before already, he stopped abruptly as he saw the two of them joking. "Will you two take this a little more seriously?", he demanded of them, looking pretty stressed out by how easy they took the challenge ahead of them. To underline the urgency of the situation he clapped in his hands and waved them over. "Hurry now! There is little time left! This way. Now."

After readjusting the helmet so that he could see what was going on around him again, the Doctor and Sarah, too, followed the team manager out of the garage and onto the part of the track where the vehicle was already prepared and waiting for them. As they walked past the other teams making their final adjustments, Sarah put on her helmet and the visor-like glasses. Although they were tinted red, her vision was not as long as she was looking through them from the inside out. She could not help but to look up the garage walls left and right of the track. Right above them there were grandstands to each side, filled with masses of people wandering about, chatting, shouting and cheering. Only now Sarah really began to feel just how big of an event this was. And she was right in the middle of everyone's attention. After all, it was their team which had won the races in the last years. Aside from the audience, the other teams and a couple of reporters, too, were interested in them. Funny how usually she should be the one running around with a tape recorder and asking questions. As a group of two reporters, accompanied by their camera men, approached the team on their way to the car, Banks abruptly turned and rushed towards them. Knowing that their vehicle was the other way, Sarah and the Doctor stopped and waited for the manager to return. They exchanged a curious glance as they wondered what kind of public statement Banks wanted to give. Judging by how soon the reporters turned back and went separate ways from the team manager, it could not have been a pleasant one. With hasty steps, the short man joined them and without sparing his pilots another look, continued walking to the position of the team's vehicle.

"I've told the management about you as my replacement pilots and now they are trying to drag our good name into the dirt because I hired two suspected saboteurs.", Banks told them. "I might even be risking a disqualification right after start." When they finally made it to their hovercraft, he opened up the doors on the passenger's cabin for his two replacement crew members, and signalled Sarah to get in first.

"Don't worry so much, Banks. Our main objective is to keep Ibrimaxus from winning.", the Doctor confidently told their manager while he waited for Sarah to position herself in the seat of the co-pilot. The inside of the vehicle had a dashboard that included two small monitors, a series of buttons, switches and indicator lamps. Some of them were labelled, but others were not. After the first moment of adjusting herself to the sight of the vehicle's insides she quickly found a safety belt to strap herself to the seat with.

When she finally looked back up to find out what the Doctor and Banks were discussing, she noticed the Gabbo Beta team leader sighing in desperation. He did not respond to the Doctor's statement, simply pushed the door shut after the time traveller had taken the spot behind the steering wheel.

"What's with him?", Sarah asked in regard to Robin Banks' mood.

Even before answering to her, the Doctor turned a switch and several lights on the dashboard lit up. "Never mind him, he just seems to think that we're the end of his career.", he quickly said. "Which we probably are, except that there's a lot more on the line than just his career." Now that the door to the outside was closed, both the engine noises and the roaring of the public had become surprisingly quiet. Perfect to concentrate on the task at hand. The screens fitted into the dashboard now showed a map of the racing area with all the possible routes highlighted on it. The Doctor flicked a switch and a red line marked the way through the grid of pathways and also activated an arrow which identified the position of their vehicle on the map. "All right! So, as the co-pilot it's your job to make sure I follow the strategic plan displayed here.", the Doctor explained to Sarah and pointed at the monitor screen.

"That's simple enough.", she replied, almost happy that for once she fully understood what to do.

But the Doctor turned to her with an impish smile on his face. "That's what you're thinking now.", he teased, before he casually tapped on the side of his helmet and addressed the navigator sitting back in the Gabbo Beta team garage.

"Terry, can you hear us?"

"Loud and clear." The voice of the navigator was projected right into Sarah's ears, and into the Doctor's, too, probably. Just as he spoke, a schema of the starting positions was displayed in front of the her eyes. It took a second for her to figure out that it must have been drawn on her visor, because it remained in her field of view wherever she looked.

"Great!", the Doctor exclaimed in response to Terry. "Now, keep a close eye on the Ibrimaxian ATRV, will you? But not too close, I still want to know what everyone else is doing." While he was getting comfortable with the information and controls at his disposal, Sarah looked out onto the track. There were about two dozen other vehicles out there, all in similar style but with different colours. Most of them, thankfully, sat behind them. The Doctor and she were able to start from the fourth position. However, someone else also had made a good spot in the start-up line. Just one place ahead of them the Ibrimaxian vehicle with its dimmed green tones awaited the start signal. Through the windscreen, Sarah could recognize the shape of the Master and an empty seat besides him. He was driving alone. Secretly she hoped that this would put him at a disadvantage, but for some reason she feared that the Master had chosen it this way for a certain purpose.

With a button press the Doctor let his vehicle retract its landing stilts and his companion could feel their car swaying gently as it began to float. Out on the track, the crew members were finally leaving and just seconds after the last stray mechanic was out of the way, a red signal light appeared on her visor where the starting positions had been seen before. Things were getting serious.

Out of the windscreen, Sarah could see the crowds of people on the grandstands calming down as they awaited the race start with great expectations. The young woman, too, could feel a nervous tingling in her bones that made her want to hold her breath. She had just become part of something that was very big, very special, and most of all, very exciting. The expectation was so great that her eyes were drawn to look at the red light even if she did not want to look at it, just because she did not want to miss the moment it turned green.

The Doctor reached over to a central part of the console to manually adjust a set of sliders. Flight height low, full power to the primary drive, as far as one could gather from the control labelling. He set them almost blindly, since his gaze did not stray once from the spot on his visor where the light, too, had to be displayed and he appeared to be counting down seconds although he formed the numbers without speaking.

The light went green!


	20. Fun With Rocket Engines (Ep5)

Like arrows shot from a bow, the vehicles darted off. Almost all of them, almost at the same moment, and they were all heading into the same direction: forwards. Sarah was pressed into her seat by the force of the sudden acceleration from standstill as her pilot, too, reacted. The grandstands and the audience just flew past and in front of them, the road opened up to the great area of the racing track where it split into three different pathways. One followed a bridge road skywards, one towards the water of the artificial bay and the way straight ahead went over even ground through a small forest of palm trees.

"Which way to go? Sarah?", the young woman heard her pilot ask, and she snapped out of the first amazement that had struck her mind. Now that the racing speed was finally reached, she could lean forward again to check the map and their position on it. According to the route that the Gabbo Beta team had already planned for them, they were to follow first the route ahead through the wooded area, collect some of the checkpoints and then to join the bridge road later on.

"Straight ahead!", Sarah replied – and just in time, too. The first three vehicles in front of them all went different ways. If this was the Formula One, seeing all of your competitors scatter like that would have confused her to no end. But this was not the Formula One. And it was not decided by speed alone. Collecting all the checkpoints in the most efficient way possible was also part of the game.

With an amazing velocity their vehicle entered the wooded area. The ground underneath them changed from a solid stone road to plain earth and sand, which caused their vehicle to create a dusty trail of dispersed sand behind them. Sarah would not have wanted to imagine what happened if they were to just scratch one of these trees with their current speed. In front of them a thin cloud of sand revealed the presence of another driver not too far ahead. The Doctor was catching up slowly, yet they were still so far away that their vision was not yet impaired by the other vehicle's trail. But it would very soon. Sarah had little idea of how bad it would get once they entered the slipstream, so she decided to check their position again a little early. According to the map, the driver in front of them was about to enter a series of turns, and so would they. "He'll be entering a bend any moment. There's two more afterwards, with alternating directions.", she decided to inform her pilot.

Just as one might expect, their competitor slowed down as he approached the first turn, which allowed the Doctor and Sarah to catch up to him much quicker. Not only they entered the dusty slipstream of the other hovercraft, but now she could also see the colours of the vehicle in front of them. Purple and blue was not a combination of tones she recognized, but she was still a little glad that they were not facing the Master again just yet. Although at first the Gabbo Beta team had gotten so close they could have almost touched the other ATRV, the Doctor, too, was eventually forced to slow down to be able to make the turn without losing control of their vehicle. If he was to overtake their competitor, he had to do it during the series of bends they were about to enter.

Nothing happened during the first bend. The Doctor stuck close to the inside of the curve to cut it off as much as possible and to get right back behind the driver in front of them. In the second bend then, he made the first attempt at overtaking. While the other pilot moved outwards to take as much speed as possible into the manoeuvre, he squeezed their vehicle past him into the inside of the bend with the disadvantage of having to go at a lower speed to make such a sharp turn. It did not work out very well, because the other team merely continued on the outside of the bend and was still back in front of the two makeshift pilots before the end of it.

At the first moment the Doctor noticed that he was not going to make it, he clicked a set of buttons on the steering wheel and pushed a slider on the console. "We can do a little better than that!", he said and immediately started another attempt just as they went into the last of the bends.

Sarah could feel by the way the vehicle reacted to the Doctor's steering now that this could work out much better indeed. A shift between the powers of the primary and secondary drives had reduced the centrifugal force that was pushing them off course. This time around they were quickly pulling up side-by-side to the other ATRV and remained there for a little while until the bend began to run out. They were faster, albeit only slightly and so the overtaking process was painfully slow. Sarah felt her heart beating faster with excitement, because at this point there was no way of telling if they were going to make it. Their car laid ahead only by the half of its length at the time the road ahead of them straightened again and both drivers were accelerating to make it out first. At first it looked as though they would finish their overtaking successfully, but then the Doctor pulled their car to the outside of the track to block their competitor. What he had not seen was that the other vehicle was still at the level of their rear.

"Watch out, Doctor!", Sarah called out, afraid that they were heading for an accident. But her warning had come too late. Their vehicle veered over, but what happened then, she had not expected. Instead of metal colliding with metal a glowing intersection of two force fields – or rather, shields – became visible between the two ATRVs. A bump was felt and both vehicles were set off course slightly, however nowhere as violently as Sarah had imagined.

The Doctor was turning around in his seat, trying to check on the driver behind them. "Sorry, chap.", he said, although the other may or may not have heard him via radio communication. "I really ought to be a bit better at this."

At approximately the same time, a label appeared on Sarah's screen, reading "collisions" and a red square lit on up next to it. There was just enough space next to it for two more. "Doctor, what was that? Did we hit him?", she asked her pilot.

"Only passively.", he quickly explained while he was concentrating on passing one of the track's invisible checkpoints. "The vehicles are equipped with a shield that keeps them from crashing into each other by pushing each other away like a pair of same polarity magnets." There was a short pause between his words as he changed a few settings. "We're not allowed to use this mechanism to our advantage, though."

"So three collisions and we're being disqualified, is that it?", Sarah guessed. As she kept examining the map screen, one of ten round symbols at the bottom lit up, signalling the first successfully crossed checkpoint.

"Yes, that's it." The Doctor had barely replied to her when suddenly, the voice of the team's navigator was back with them.

"Attention!", Terry called. "The pilots of the Sagitari team just crashed! Their car had an engine failure on the bridge road, causing them to crash land in the woods below. They ended up nowhere near the track, though, so you two just keep going for now."

"What? An engine failure?" Sarah exclaimed, slightly shocked, because she could not quite believe it. She had thought that all of this had been over. "Don't tell me..."

"Sabotage? I'd guess so." It was the Doctor who jumped to this unpleasant conclusion.

"But this time it _**really**_ wasn't me!", protested his companion.

"Do you remember when the Master said that you and I were not originally involved in his plan?" He took his gaze off the road for a second to glance over to his worried co-pilot. "I would assume that this is his plan A springing into action." By the time he turned back to the course ahead and continued to concentrate on driving, the Doctor addressed their navigator back at the garage. "Terry! Play the footage of the crash to Sarah, will you?"

"On it.", the other man replied and a picture appeared in the woman's field of view.

It was the recorded footage of a camera trained on the Sagitari vehicle, which was easily recognizable by its bright fire colours. The footage showed to Sarah how the Sagitari pilots chose the bridge road leading skywards and over the racing area. They followed it just for a little while until suddenly, just before an intersection, the air cushion underneath their hovercraft appeared to gradually, but quickly, vanish until they touched down on the road. Unlike the collision the Doctor had just a minute prior, there was no shield to keep the metal from hitting the ground and sparks flew as the ATRV slid across the stone, seemingly unable to manoeuvre. At the time, they were still so fast that they were coming off course and because the road had no crash barriers to either side they simply dropped off after crossing the edge of the road. From there they fell deep, but not without the pilots still attempting to save themselves somehow. Lights were flashing in the exhaust pipes and with some effort they managed to get their vehicle to glide a little, but not enough to prevent what looked like a pretty nasty crash. Their vehicle took down at least three palm trees as it hit the ground.

And there, the footage ended.

"What happened to the pilots?", Sarah fearfully wanted to know and hoped that Terry had heard her, too.

"All I know is that they were injured and that they are being transmatted out of the track right now.", the navigator replied to her. "Sagitari was, naturally, forced to drop out of the race. This kind of damage to machine and men cannot be recovered after race start."

While Sarah tried to somehow figure out in her head what had happened there, the Doctor took a turn to ask a question.

"Just how successful were the Sagitari in the last years?", he wanted to know.

"Pretty successful. They've made second place last year, and until five years back they made first place regularly."

"Then they were a threat to the Master almost as much as Gabbo Beta.", the Time Lord concluded. Sarah could not properly see his eyes behind the red visor, but she thought she noticed him frowning.

"I've got a bad feeling we might be in for a few more surprises..."

Although this announcement had distracted them a little from the race, they were still going and just now, another checkpoint appeared on Sarah's screen. It was not long now until they had to change paths and move up the bridge road as well. "Should the shield not have protected them from the crash?", she wondered aloud.

"That's not how it works.", her pilot corrected her, "It only protects ATRVs from crashing into _**each other**_. Coming off course is still very dangerous."

Sarah did not like that logic, but found herself forced to accept it, anyway. "Then we better stay on course...", she added quietly and tried to focus back to the race they were still in, too.

"We're taking the bridge road on the next disjunction.", Sarah then informed the Doctor, but she was not feeling very well going there after having seen what had happened to the Sagitari team. The next crossroads approached quickly and as the Doctor changed directions as planned, the ground underneath their vehicle changed back from earth and sand to a carefully constructed stone road. It was made from the same white material like the houses in Marbarett and its glossy bright shimmer might have burned in Sarah's eyes if she would not have had the visor. The Gabbo Beta ATRV began to run much smoother now that it was floating over an even surface and they were quickly gaining speed again. Underneath of them, the road was supported by pillars leading higher and higher above the terrain, reaching a frightening height. According to Sarah's map, there were three more checkpoints that could only be collected on this level. And one of them was curiously placed between a gap in the road. She knew what that suggested.

"Doctor, I think there's a jump coming up ahead.", she said. Good thing that the Doctor was driving because she had no idea how to get this hovercraft to fly, although she imagined that it could be great fun if performed correctly. With her sight set on the road in front of them, she soon discovered the gap she had expected in the distance. There was even a small ramp leading up to it.

"Ha ha!", she heard the Doctor laugh excitedly, "This is going to be good!" While they were approaching the jump still, he changed some of the vehicle's settings again.

The ramp was getting closer and ever faster so. Sarah crossed her fingers, hoping that they would make it well and safe. Although she had good faith in the Doctor's skill, in the back of her mind she was constantly reminded that there was another force at work. One that appeared to be hell bent on winning, no matter the losses. The Doctor kept accelerating and Sarah was pressed back into her seat. She noticed him hovering a hand over a lever as he waited for the right moment to give the vehicle another boost from the primary drive which would be needed to make the hovercraft jump. When they eventually arrived at the ramp, everything just went past so fast. Sarah had barely found the time to take a deep breath she could hold as the Doctor fired the blast and their ATRV leapt off the road into the air.

" **Woah!"**

It ascended rapidly, but after the initial blast ran out, the flying hovercraft settled down on a new height far above of where a road would have been if there was not a gap. The ATRV even flew for a little while, glided nicely with the support of the two different drives like Sarah imagined only a mix of a propeller and jet plane could. Just a couple of seconds and she almost would have begun to relax again, feeling now that the vehicle was actually quite safe in the air, but then she heard the Doctor laugh out.

"Here comes the best bit!", he announced and tilted the steering wheel up, causing the machine's nose to point down.

And from there, they went down like a cart on a roller-coaster. Sarah felt her body get lighter as the downwards acceleration partly cancelled out gravitation and she let out a scream of excitement while the Doctor next to her laughed as mad as only he could. At first, the road ahead – where it began anew – came closer very fast and their angle still seemed to be too steep, but then her pilot flew in an arc just in time to bring them back to the right level. Surprisingly, their vehicle returned to the road very softly, almost as if it had never taken that trip through the air. No " _thud"_ and no touch down on the road.

"You're right, that _**was**_ good!", Sarah exclaimed, deeply impressed, and looked at the Doctor, who had no time to turn his head towards her, but was grinning anyway. It seemed she was not the only one who was surprised that the jump had gone so smoothly.


	21. The Drop (Ep5)

"You two really are having too much fun with this."

This dry statement was the voice of Terry ringing in Sarah's ears. He was probably listening in on their conversation whether he wanted to or not. After a short pause, however, he decided to say something useful. "Watch out now, you're entering the bit where the Sagitari had their accident.", the navigator warned them.

"Thanks very much, Terry.", Sarah replied, in a sarcastic sort of way and checked the map again. Another checkpoint had appeared in the list and not too far in front of them there was a crossing of two bridge roads. As the co-pilot looked up to examine the spot in the distance with her own eyes, she found the intersection to be made of a different material than the rest of the road. Some darker kind of stone, which as she assumed, had to be a reinforced material capable of taking the extra weight of two roads.

"Take a turn left here.", the co-pilot pointed out.

In order to make that turn, the Doctor slowed down a little just as they entered the part of the road that was made out of the greyish material. But from there on, things stopped going according to plan. The map screen in front of Sarah suddenly began to flicker and she knocked on the surrounding panels in a hope to get it working properly again. But her action just had the opposite effect; The screen turned dark for good. "What's going on?", she worried aloud. Within just another second, the lights of the brightly lit buttons, labels and switches all stopped working, too.

"An electromagnetic disturbance!", the Doctor gasped suddenly. He was still steering the vehicle around the bend, but they were slowly losing height. "The secondary engine is giving out!" In an attempt to still save something, he tried pressing a few buttons, but Sarah could not see what good that would do them now. Especially because they were still moving too fast and drifting off course. At this rate, they were going to end up just like the Sagitari.

"Slow us down, Doctor!", Sarah shouted.

"What else do you think I'm trying?" He pushed down the steering wheel and put more of the remaining power of the secondary drive to the air cushion in an attempt to use it for braking.

Their vehicle was still moving along the bend, continuing to drift ever more outwards, but finally slowing down now. As Sarah looked out of the windscreen, she fearfully watched the edge of the road approaching. She had seen how deep that drop was and what had happened to the other two pilots. There really was no need for a first hand experience, if it only could be avoided somehow.

A metallic clanging was heard when the vehicle's body touched the stone and began to slide across the road with the hellish noise of scraping metal. That was it; No more power from the secondary drive to maintain the air cushion or to manoeuvre. From here on, the rest of the rough ride, both speed and direction, was left to luck. "Come on..! Stop!", the Doctor pressed the words out of gritted teeth. He was still holding the steering wheel in a position he probably hoped would help, but by the commanding tone of his voice Sarah could guess that even he was not so sure what was going to happen next.

Slower… Slower… The terrible screeching noise of the metal faded. But the edge with the palm tree forest underneath was still getting closer. Sarah's eyes were wide with fear. She would not have looked but she could not turn her head away.

Finally, after all of this painful, helpless waiting, the vehicle came to a standstill. In front of Sarah was no road any more, just the forest way below. But they were not falling and that told her that the back of their hovercraft must be keeping them on the bridge road. Realizing that it was a balance act, she didn't dare to move. Except to gasp for a lungful of air she really needed right now. Out of the corner of her eyes, she noticed the Doctor slowing lifting his gloved hands from the steering wheel and heard him breathe out slowly, carefully.

"Good grief! Are you two all right?"

It was the voice of the navigator booming into Sarah's ear and she would have almost jumped.

"Y-Yes, we're fine… still.", stammered the co-pilot.

"I can't read any of your dials. Everything seems dead except for your primary boost and the crash shield", said Terry.

"What happened?"

The Doctor turned his head to exchange a few worried looks with Sarah. "Something in our secondary drive control reacted with the intersection material and caused an electromagnetic field.", he eventually explained and reached for a big button next to the steering wheel. His hand hovered over it for a while, but then he made a decision and pressed it. Whatever he had expected, it did not happen. A few of the dashboard lights lit up, but only faint and briefly. Nothing turned back on. "Maybe, if I could get out… I could reroute the drive control...", mused the Doctor.

"Oh no you don't!" Sarah almost interrupted him. What if his counterweight was all what kept them from falling off the ledge?

Surprisingly, she was backed up by Terry. "Stay right where you are! Out on the track, the vehicle's shield cannot protect you.", the navigator explained quickly. "And the Ibrimaxian ATRV is about to cross the intersection in a couple of seconds."

The young woman gasped. "The Master!"

If he found them sitting here, almost helpless, he would ruthlessly exploit the situation, no doubt about it.

"We have to get away from here!", she figured and turned back to the Doctor for help and advise, making the first suggestion that would hopefully get his brilliant mind to work something out. "Can't we just – I don't know – fly down? This thing can fly after all, can't it?"

"Well, yes, but not from standstill without the air cushion.", her friend argued. He dismissed the idea although he seemed to be at a loss for a better suggestion. Meanwhile, they were running out of time. In the distance – or maybe only so faint because of the almost sound proof passenger cabin – there was the sound of another hovercraft igniting its boost. The Doctor turned his head to peek sideways out of his part of the windscreen, where a portion of the intersection was still visible to him.

"What about other security features, then?", Sarah kept trying, reaching for every useful thought that entered her mind. Her eyes scanned the dashboard for any control that could help in their current situation, but everything was turned off! "What if we would have had that engine failure during flight?" Something should be there that would have kept them from crash landing! A cushion – air or otherwise, for example – anything!

She had just found a button with a symbol on it she thought she recognized as a parachute, when the Doctor suddenly yelled in her ear:

" **Get down!"**

He did not leave her the time to react or even to say something and immediately reached over to her to wrap one arm around his companion's shoulders and press his other onto her head. It could have been only a second or less before something bumped into their vehicle, not forcefully, but the repulsion of the shield was enough to push the two pilots and their vehicle off the ledge.

Their ATRV turned over, nose pointing down to the palm tree forest and the ground was getting closer now very, very fast. They fell.

Because of the Doctor's protective measures Sarah could not see much of what was going on, but felt the downwards pull of gravitation clearly. Her body was frozen stiff with the fearful expectation of the impending impact. But as they were falling, she suddenly felt lights shining into her face and there was the noise of the secondary drive being revved up again. Within the second, her mind just understood. Once they had left the intersection, the field blocking their drive was gone. And as she dared to tear open her eyes, she was looking straight at an orange button with the symbol of a parachute on it – the one she had found just a second before their fall. Now that the power was back, it was highlighted and blinking! It was probably the first, and maybe the only time she would ever do that, but Sarah freed an arm from the Doctor's attempt to save her from injuries and reached for the button.

She hit it! There was a noise and a fraction of a second later, a shock, as their fall was abruptly slowed down.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Doctor startled by the shock which he must have mistaken for the impact on the ground. "Are we there yet?", he jerked up his head with eyes wide, before realizing what really had happened. His hold on Sarah eased slowly and she pushed his arms out of the way to be able to look for herself.

The pull of gravity was still strong and they were also still looking down at the forest, but their descent had become much gentler now. More… manageable, as the Doctor, too, was about to discover. "Aha! Of course! The power is back!", he happily exclaimed and completely gave up on Sarah's protection to fiddle with the vehicle's controls again. It did not take long for him to balance the ATRV during its fall and change their direction of descent so that they headed for the crash site of the Sagitari hovercraft.

Sarah sighed in great relief when she heard the noise of the landing stilts extending and saw the palm trees rising slowly left and right of the passenger cabin. They had escaped the Master again. But for some reason, she was not so confident any more that they were still able to keep the villain from winning the race.

Just moments before their touchdown, the Doctor fired the air cushion back up and they settled down carefully on the sandy forest ground. The ATRV ended up sitting unevenly between the palm trees the Sagitari hovercraft had torn down during their crash.

"Phew! That was so close.", exclaimed Terry over radio communication. Judging by his voice, he seemed seriously concerned, if not a little angry, after having witnessed from every single one of his cameras what had happened. "I ought to get you out of there, that Ibrimaxian pilot went straight for you! I think he's insane!"

"That's just the reason why he needs to be stopped!" The Doctor replied harshly and so quick that he might have intended to cut Terry off mid-sentence.

"You mean, you want to continue? Then what about your damages, injuries?"

"None to report." Was the short reply that followed although the replacement pilot glanced over to Sarah once as if to double-check that he was right. "Don't you dare pull us out of the race just yet!", he then demanded of the navigator. The Doctor knocked a lever hastily over and while the door on his side of the passenger cabin opened, he removed his helmet. Running a hand twice through his hair, he casually re-established his mob of curls before stepping out.

Sarah watched him as he left, puzzled. There was the voice of their navigator still projected through her helmet into her ear, but not into the Doctor's, since he had so rudely abandoned the conversation. "Listen, you've just had a crash. Even if you get right back on track, do have any idea how much time that cost you?", Terry asked the Time Lord, but it seemed he could not see on his monitors that the pilot was out of reach. When there was no reply, Terry called out for them, impatiently. "Doctor? Hello, Sarah?"

The young woman could only guess, but by the way the Doctor just stood there and looked at the crash landed vehicle sitting in the distance, not a hundred yards away, he seemed to be getting lost in his thoughts again.

"Hold the line, Terry.", Sarah eventually replied back to the crew member, but then she, too, opened her door and took off the helmet so she would not have to talk to their navigator again. Naturally, she assumed her friend has had a good reason to cut off the communication. The companion jumped out of the resting hovercraft and landed with her feet between splintered wood and torn palm tree leaves, some of them scorched black.

Slowly, she walked up to the Time Lord. "Doctor..?", she carefully addressed him.

"I am getting tired of this!", he exclaimed and kicked away a mound of sand in front of him before abruptly turning on his heels, looking back at Sarah. "Aren't you getting tired of this? To be always under attack from the Master? Hm?", he promptly added. Even through the red tinted glasses, she saw him squinting his eyes and furrowing his eyebrows angrily.

"Of course I am, and quite so!", she self-confidently answered and nodded. The Doctor might have had several encounters with the Master already, but one was more than enough for Sarah to feel fed up about it!

"Yes…!" He stretched the word and continued to look about the place with a somewhat grumpy expression on his face. Seemingly he had already calmed down again, but Sarah noticed how his eyes rested on the Sagitari vehicle. Something about it must have given him an idea, or a thought at least. "You know, I think we should be doing some sabotaging ourselves for once.", he explained himself eventually and glanced over to his companion.

"You want to sabotage the Master? At this stage?", Sarah wondered aloud. Their adversary was far away now, moving across the racing terrain with an amazing speed. Was there anything they could do at all? Even before she had opened her mouth, the Doctor had already begun to walk further away from their ATRV and towards the Sagitari one. The damaged orange-yellow vehicle laid on one side after one of its landing stilts had broken off during the crash. With little other choice left to her, the young woman followed him over the fallen palm tree trunks.

"I don't know if we can really call it a sabotage, but – remember, Sarah – we're here to stop the Master, we don't necessarily have to win.", the Doctor explained and as they kept walking, Sarah saw how he casually pulled one end of the multi-coloured scarf out of the neck piece of his jump suit. Honestly, she had not thought him crazy enough to bring his favourite piece of neck wear with him. "Although I would have preferred to win. Then we could have kept the trophy to protect it ourselves. However, if we can just hinder the Master, he will be forced to steal it afterwards – which, at least, will give us more time to act." Once the Doctor had reached the orange-yellow ATRV he turned back around to face Sarah. "If only...", he said, paused and then began anew. "If only we could reveal his intentions to the racing committee, that would make things so much easier."

Sarah shook her head and sighed. "Don't expect him to confess in front of anyone else but his team mates or us, and he's only open to us because he knows no one really listens to you and me." She took her eyes off the tall man with the silly scarf to examine the crashed vehicle lying in front of them. It seemed intact for the most part, except for that broken off stilt and a series of deep scratches covering its body in the places where it had hit the trees. There was a faint, but highly unpleasant smell of burnt rubber in the air. Or at least that was what Sarah thought it smelled like. Of course, there were no tires on this hovercraft that could burn.

As the Doctor unlocked the cover of the engine, Sarah went to help him. It did not take a full minute for him to find and fish the thing out of the metal body's inside which had caused the crash in the first place. By the look of it, it seemed to be a small piece of metal with a cable wound around it.

"Is that our culprit?", the companion asked, because the Doctor had barely shown it to her before he tried to put it into his coat pocket. Of course, he did not have his coat with him, and so – evidence or not – he just threw the piece of technology away.

"You may bet the Brigadier's title it is.", came the reply and he immediately went on to put the engine cover back into its place. Sarah figured that he might have found the object so fast because, some hours earlier, he had taken apart an entire engine just like this one and knew the inner structure really well now. Crouching down to reach the underside of the vehicle, the Doctor tore off a small panel that was already bent and pulled out a set of wires.

Whatever he was doing, he was getting so concentrated again, that probably, he was not going to tell Sarah the point of it unless she asked. "So, what's the plan?", she tried and placed her hands on her hips. "What good will it do to repair this?"

"I'm not repairing it.", the Doctor corrected her. "I'm reversing the shield polarity."


	22. A Change In Plan (Ep5)

Since no further explanation followed, Sarah rustled up her own memory. A little while earlier, he had explained the functions of the shield to her. "But you said the shields worked like same-polarity magnets. If you changed the polarity, wouldn't that mean that this vehicle attracts others then?" She could not see what that was good for, except to make things more dangerous than they already were.

Although he had not brought his sonic screwdriver with him, the Gallifreyan time traveller managed to separate and reconnect the wires in a way that pleased him. "Yes, and it will attract the Master's, too. If I can get it close enough to his, it will slow him down considerably." Soon, he was back on his feet and opened the ATRV's door to the driver seat.

"That sounds very dangerous...", Sarah quietly stated and began to furrow her brows anxiously. But then she noticed the special wording the Doctor had used. "Wait! What do you mean, _**you**_ _will get_ _it_ _close enough_?"

When he finally turned around and they could lock eyesight again, he had an expression on his face as though he was surprised she had not figured it out herself yet. "Well, I am going to ambush him, of course!", he said and then pointed at the young woman. "And you! You will stay on the Master's heels and pick me up once I have attached this ATRV to his!"

Sarah raised both eyebrows. "How am I going to do that?", she questioned his plan.

Also, it probably went without saying that she never quite liked to see him pull a stunt on his own.

He nodded into the direction of their original hovercraft, the Gabbo Beta one.

"Oohh!", Sarah exclaimed, before chuckling sheepishly. "I can't drive that thing."

The Doctor contradicted her confidently, an encouraging smile on his face. "Of course you can! You have a driver's licence, don't you?" While asking, he walked back into her direction, then past the young woman and towards the hovercraft he wanted her to drive.

"Yes, I do. But that's just for Great Britian and ordinary, four-wheel, one-drive motor cars! And mopeds!", his companion called after him before following into his steps. He overlooked these simple facts sometimes, so she felt the need to remind him. "From Earth, you know?"

"Well, that's just where this technology originated – so it's practically same deal! This one merely goes into six directions, too; Nothing a Sarah-Jane Smith can't handle."

When he walked up to the pilot's side of the blue, red and black hovercraft, and gestured for Sarah to get in, she realized that there was no point in arguing with him. He was probably right, even though she had never driven anything that went into more than four directions: forwards, backwards, left and right. With a small sigh of defeat, Sarah dropped behind the steering wheel and, admittedly a little reluctant, began to examine the controls in front of her. It did not look much like her MG car at home, she thought, expect for the fact that something like a dashboard and a steering wheel existed. "No pedals.", she pointed out to her friend, who was still standing between the open door and her.

The answer was as simple as it was short. "Rocker switches.", he said and waited for her to discover them on the backside of the steering wheel.

"Oh.", Sarah realized, then looked around again until she found something else missing. "Gear stick?"

"Fully automatic gear shift."

Still the same concepts to driving as back in the 20th century. "Alright then, I'll manage.", she eventually told her friend and smiled back at him, now that she had found some confidence of her own.

"Great!" Before leaving her to it, the Doctor went to the back of her new ATRV and she heard him opening the engine cover. At first, she wanted to get out to help him, but he was so quick that there was no necessity for it. When he returned, he threw another metal piece with wires around it onto the co-pilot's seat and picked his helmet back up.

"Off you go, Sarah! We haven't got any time to lose." Those were the last words she heard from him before he pushed the door shut and ran back to the Sagitari vehicle.

Like snapping out of a moment of absent-mindedness, Sarah quickly put her own helmet back on and closed the seat belt. Almost immediately, Terry was back with her, asking all sorts of questions to what had been going on in the time their communication had been cut off. The young woman did her best to calm him down and to remind him that they were pretty much out of the race anyway – except that now they had a plan to stop the Master, so there was still something they could achieve. While she made her first attempts at getting the hovercraft to move, she also had to explain the Doctor's plan to her navigator. The trick to that was to sound convinced, although really, she only had a vague idea of what was going to happen. Albeit he did so only reluctantly and it had taken quite a bit of persuasion from Sarah, Terry finally told her the position of the Master's vehicle.

Needless to say, the ATRV did not drive like a 20th century car at all. It was a hovercraft, and as such, the steering was nowhere as precise and with the amount of force this futuristic engine put behind it, that was not making it any easier. Sarah was just endlessly glad once she had gotten the vehicle out of the palm tree forest with its uneven ground and countless obstacles. Although she did end up bumping into a few trunks on the way.

As soon as there was something like a paved road underneath her vehicle again, Sarah tried to peek over to the screen on the now unoccupied co-pilot's side to figure out where she was. "Terry!", she asked over radio communication, "Can you show me the way the Master is taking?"

"I can lead you to his current position, but I don't have access to his planned route.", answered the navigator.

"Then lead me to him, please."

==== ==== The Doctor ==== ====

"Doctor, is that you in our ATRV?"

The voice speaking to the Time Lord was not the one of his navigator, but of the feathered Sagitari inhabitant, San Aria, who had helped him earlier in his attempt to catch Sarah's other self from the time paradox. His radio communication had linked up with their team, now that he was sitting in the wrong vehicle.

"Yes, that would be me.", he answered. "I'm sorry, but I will have to borrow this for a little while."

Unlike Sarah, he was not yet back on the track. The Sagitari vehicle had taken some damages in the crash and although he was pretty much unable to repair anything, he had to find a way to make do with the components that were still intact. In any case, his idea was that Sarah kept the Master busy until he could find a place to literally just jump out and ambush the villain. One shot was all that was needed – and all that he had.

There were a few moments of silence at the other end of the line. "I don't know what your plan is, but you're welcome to go ahead.", San Aria permitted him, quite surprisingly. "We have seen all that happened. To my pilots, to you and your companion. I am convinced now that it was not your fault." Her usually so elegant voice suddenly sounded shaken as she added: "My co-pilot has just died of the injuries from that crash. The same thing could have happened to you."

When he heard the terrible news, the Doctor looked up from the dials. "There will be a whole lot more of suffering if we don't stop the Master – the Ibrimaxian pilot – now.", he explained, a grim tone to his voice, that was lacking all his usual sympathy.

"San Aria? San Aria, can you guide me to him?"

==== ==== Sarah-Jane ==== ====

Although Sarah had been following Terry's directions for a little while now, she was still very uncomfortable driving the hellish hovercraft which went much too fast for her taste. Or her experience with it, rather. She hated the bends because she always seemed to drift dangerously outwards when she entered them. By some miracle, she had not come off course or crashed into one of the other competitors yet, and according to her navigator, she was still on the right track. At least, thanks to her team having fallen behind so much, it did not matter any longer that she was missing check points and losing time. Sarah, who was now in the invidious position of the Gabbo Beta main pilot, could take the shortest path straight to the Master. By a relayed message from the Sagitari team, her navigator had also informed her, that they were now supporting the Doctor in his pursuit, so things seemed to be looking up slightly.

After Terry had sent Sarah onto the surface of the bay's own body of water, the greenish tones of the Master's vehicle soon became visible in the distance. But not for long, because she had begun to fall behind again, almost immediately after her last turn. Obviously, the Master had more experience than her when it came to piloting. Honestly, she had expected nothing less of another Time Lord. But what was she to do? She tried around with the boost of her machine, but ended up overshooting another bend, forcing her to get back onto the Master's trail with another great loss in distance. It was disastrous! At this rate, she would be of no use to the Doctor! Over radio communication, Sarah heard how Terry was taking in air to say something, but then decided otherwise, because he had probably realized that, whatever he said, could only end up to sound discouraging. But as Sarah was getting more and more upset about her predicament, she suddenly realized that there was absolutely no reason for her to conform to any rules of the race at all any more. The Master, on the other hand, had to – because if he was disqualified as well – the race would end early for him. So in the very same second of that thought entering her mind, Sarah decided not to take the next bend as planned. Since she was pursuing the Master on the water, there were no obstacles to keep her from cutting the next corner – marked by a small buoy – by a mile.

The Earth woman fired the boost for a short moment as she entered her new path and finally managed to close in far enough to be considered a threat to the Master. A smile crept on her face when she thought of how much she would like to see the perplexed expression on his face in the moment he noticed that a human was about to beat him again. The fine spray of water, which his hovercraft was throwing up, now reached Sarah's windscreen. He was panning left and right over the width of the marked track available to him, obviously trying to block an attempt of overtaking, and Sarah, although she had little intention to, was playing along. Her only real concern was that keeping up with the more experienced driver was almost too difficult already and as soon as he would leave the bay, cutting another corner might just become impossible. In the distance, the track passed by another palm tree forest and the sand beach it stood on.

" **He's there!"** , Terry suddenly called out. "Fall back a little!"

"What?" She was not sure what he meant, but falling back was easy, so she let a little distance come between her and the Master. "What for?" Her questions were answered just a second later. The Master had barely entered close proximity to the beach as the ignition of a boost was heard. Not Sarah's, and not the Master's and it sounded much more violent than it should be. Out of the palm tree forest, a battered orange and yellow ATRV jumped out and into the Master's path.

" **Doctor!"** , Sarah could not help but to call out the driver's name.

Although the Sagitari vehicle had landed in front of their adversary and was going faster at first, it fell behind quickly and so the Master was forced into overtaking. What he did not know, as he was closing in, was that the Doctor had cleverly reversed the shield's magnetic force. In the moment both vehicles laid side-by-side and the Master attempted to push the other one forcefully out of the way, there was a bolt of light between the vehicles. Under normal circumstances, the shield would have kept the hovercrafts from colliding, but now they were drawn into each other. Lights kept flashing up until the metal bodies finally touched. This bundled mass of two vehicles was panning outwards, off course, and away from the dangerous forest area while the Master tried to free his ATRV from the other by pulling away. But the force was too strong. As if it was tied to him with a rubber band, the Sagitari hovercraft kept coming back and colliding with him.

This magnetic pull of the damaged vehicle – which the Doctor had either shut off or put to reverse now – slowed them down enough so that Sarah could finally keep up with the Time Lords and she even could have overtaken them with ease if she had wanted to. Although she felt that the Master's next action might be dangerous and unpredictable, she manoeuvred herself to the side of the two ATRVs. Because she feared for the Doctor's life and did not know how he would get away, she kept glancing over to them frequently.

The passenger side door of the Sagitari hovercraft opened slowly. Sarah noticed the Doctor crawling over the centre console to get out and onto the short wings of the Master's ATRV. But she was not the only one to witness his attempt of getting away. From her position to the side of both of them, she saw the Master turning his head and pulling a lever to open his door as well. He would try to stop the Doctor, one way or another. There was too much animosity between them for either of them to let the other simply get away.

" **Doctor, watch out!"** , Sarah tried to shout, but realized quickly that her friend could neither hear her over the radio communication, nor through the sound proof cabin. Hastily, she reached for the same lever on her dashboard which unlocked the co-pilot's door.

On the other side of the gap between the vehicles, the Doctor leapt out of the passenger cabin of the damaged hovercraft, which was now clinging to and shifting around the Master's. Its movements were accompanied by that horrible screeching noise of metal scraping against metal. Sarah's friend managed to get a hold on an edge of the Ibrimaxian ATRV's form, just barely preventing a dangerous fall. She held her breath as she watched. There was no doubt in her mind, that at this speed, even hitting the water below them would turn out to be lethal. The Doctor's heavy wool scarf was fluttering in the headwind like a fine piece of yarn as he fought his way towards the outer end of the short wing he had found a foothold on.

" **Sarah!"** , his companion heard him shout, his usually so booming voice just about audible over the noises of wind and metal. He was looking over to her and waving, trying to get her attention.

Sarah carefully tried to manoeuvre even closer to the Master's hovercraft and that almost unpredictable counterweight which was moving between them as the magnetic force demanded. But just as she wanted to hold out a hand, wave for her friend to try to make the jump, her eyes fell on the Master and widened. He leaned out of his opened door, a short stick in his hand that he pointed at the Doctor.

No explanation was needed to tell her that it was a weapon.

" **DOCTOR!"**

==== ==== End of EPISODE 5 ==== ====


	23. Justice Takes Its Toll (Ep6)

==== ==== EPISODE 6 ==== ====

Sarah's eyes widened fearfully when she noticed the Master drawing a device and pointing it out of his vehicle's cabin at the Doctor. Her friend was mostly helpless, trying hard enough already to find a solid foothold on the wing of the rapidly moving hovercraft.

" **DOCTOR!"** , the young woman called out his name with all the force she could put into her voice, desperately hoping he would be able hear her warning.

And he did!

As the Doctor jerked his head around, he was met with the view of the Master about to attack him. Almost at the same time the point of the stick-like device in the hands of his arch enemy was lighting up, he managed to step backwards and press himself flat against the body of the vehicle.

Sarah was unable to see the path or the direction the Master had fired his shot at precisely, but since her friend remained unharmed, he must have missed. Yet that did not mean that this opened up a chance for the Doctor to finally make his escape. When the Master realized that he could not hit him from this angle, but could not leave his ATRV either, he tried another way to rid himself of the other Time Lord: He accelerated rapidly. A gap opened up between his hovercraft and the damaged one that was bound to it because of the magnetic force of its manipulated shield. It looked as though he might be able to pull free!

Sarah only wished she would not have to keep looking back at the road and to keep up with them. This escape of the Doctor was taking much too long. It was only a matter of time before something got into her way and she would be unable to catch him if he fell!

" **Stop accelerating, you thick headed fool!"** , the Doctor angrily roared at the driver of the machine he was still trapped on. **"Don't you see that's not worth it?"**

" **If it allows me to hold an entire galaxy at ransom, it is always worth it!"** The Master's reply – shouted, just as the Doctor's words because he had little other choice if he wanted to be heard over the noises of wind and machines – was dead serious. Not even accompanied by a mad laugh, and maybe that was why Sarah thought the man was so terribly dangerous.

She noticed the Doctor still gesturing for her to get closer. Because of the acceleration, the damaged vehicle was now sitting in the Master's back, but always just a moment away to catch up with him if he was to let up on his current speed. As a side effect of this, however, the inexperienced young driver was able to bring her vehicle even closer to the Ibrimaxian ATRV and more specifically, the bit of its metal body the Doctor clung on to. Secretly, she wished that her hovercraft had some sort of autopilot she could activate, so that she would be able to climb to the other side of the passenger's cabin and reach out a hand for her friend to hold on to. But as it was, she could only look over to him, to see that tense expression on his face and to hope desperately that he would find a good moment to safely make the jump from one vehicle to the other.

Suddenly, the Master veered towards Sarah's lane and without a properly functioning shield to keep their vehicles from crashing, a violent shock ran through the hovercrafts. The Doctor, who had just been preparing to let go, was catapulted into her direction without any warning. Although the young woman's heart skipped a beat as she already feared for the worst, the moment of relief was much stronger when she turned around and saw that he had managed to get a hold on the upper edge of the open passenger side door. As soon as he swung around and was back inside of the vehicle, Sarah let up on the switch that triggered the acceleration, allowing them to slow down. With eyes of worry she looked at her friend, who had just dropped into the seat of the co-pilot, looking exhausted from that terrifying situation he had just gone through.

"Are you all right?", Sarah asked.

"Yes.", he answered between deep breaths and with a faint notion of a smile on his face, "Yes, I think so; I am now."

Before their eyes, the Master was getting away, although the damaged Sagitari ATRV was coming after him, threatening to crash into him any moment now, like the mystical Damokles' sword. Since the Doctor did not insist on keeping up with him, Sarah slowed down further until they came to a complete standstill. Now that this incredible chase was over, they had ended up somewhere on a small sandbank. After all this noise of wind and the screaming of scraping metal – not to mention the speed with which the landscape had rushed past them – it felt to Sarah as if time itself had almost come to a halt now. Through the quiet she could hear her own heart pounding in her ears. But the fear, worry and excitement were letting up on her again, slowly...

"Doctor?", she asked, and hesitated there for a second. "We're not going to finish this race, are we?"

"No, we're not. I mean; I don't want to, and you look like you don't want to, either.", he replied, all in one breath, and with just one short glance to the woman behind the steering wheel. "There's no point to it now, anyway..."

They rested in silence for a few more seconds. In the back of Sarah's mind, she knew they had to get out of the racing area, still. Maybe the crew could come and pick them up – after all, her alien friend was right: They were as good as disqualified now.

"True.", said someone in regard to the Doctor's assumption. "You've broken pretty much every rule there is."

It was the familiar voice of their navigator.

"Hello Terry.", Sarah greeted him anew and had to keep herself from chuckling. The breaking of rules seemed to happen rather often to those travelling through the time-space vortex. "I'm guessing Banks is losing it now, hm?" The team's leader had been in enough stress before already, but back then, at least she and the Doctor had still hoped to win – not to crash and then to perform a stunt to get someone else out of the race as well.

"You're almost right about that, but there's one thing keeping him from it.", Terry surprisingly told her. "That's the good news I have for you."

The young woman's face lit up as she heard his announcement. "Oh! Some good news for a change! Tell us!", she demanded.

"The Sagitari and we, too, were able to record the voice of that villain as he confessed his intentions to you. It's not a particularly good recording – actually, it's a pretty poor recording – but Banks and San Aria are contacting the committee right now to get Ibrimaxus disqualified." While she listened, Sarah's smile kept growing wider and she looked over to the Time Lord, just for further reassuring that these news were indeed as fantastic as they sounded. The Doctor nodded back at her. A little tired still, but chuckling.

"Even if the Master – or whatever you called him – makes it on the podium, he will be in big trouble!", finished Terry, an almost joyful tone to his voice.

In response, the Doctor called out: "Oh, I do hope they will achieve more than idle talk!"

"That's great to hear!", Sarah agreed. It was a bit of an unexpected turn to her, but very much welcomed nonetheless.

Silence returned just for a little while, but then a new thought had entered the mind of her friend. "By the way...", he suddenly began. "The Master should have stopped by now. Even he has to realize that he will go nowhere with that kind of counterweight on his heels. Terry, can you relay to us the sky camera feed showing his ATRV?" For some reason that Sarah did not quite understand yet, a frown was back on his face.

"Sure I can, here goes..." But while Sarah waited for something to appear on one of the screens or on her visor, Terry just hesitated. There was a fearful gasp at the other end of the radio communication. The Doctor's frown grew deeper. "Oh… Oh, this doesn't look good!", the navigator exclaimed.

"Terry, the camera feed."

Thanks to the Doctor's reminder, a picture finally appeared right in front of Sarah's eyes. "R-Right.", Terry still stammered and it took a moment or two for her to realize just why. The camera showed the Master's green hovercraft rushing towards the goal at an incredible speed. Everything surrounding him was just a blur of colours going past and the picture could just barely keep up. Maybe it was just because of that, that the damaged Sagitari vehicle was in the visible range of the camera, at the other end of the picture. It was still following the Master, but a greater gap had opened up between them. Yet the simple fact that it kept coming after him suggested that the driverless heap of metal, too, was mighty fast. Sarah had seen earlier how the magnetic force had held the vehicles together. Like a rubber band, the Sagitari ATRV had fallen behind as the Master accelerated, but then it would always catch up to him. As soon as he let up on the speed, just a little… Quite obviously, the Master could not go like this forever. And when he would slow down… the inevitable would happen.

Sarah could only try to imagine what kind of crash it would be, but even she did not dare to draw such a picture before her mind's eye. "He must be thinking that he can still win...", she guessed, but her words were uttered without a breath, almost a whisper. Greyish and white colours appeared left and right of the Master's ATRV. There was just about enough time for her to realize that those had to be the grandstands… and that the audience would be in for a terrible sight. Just as the Master had crossed the line which marked both the start and finish, his hovercraft began to tilt forward slightly. It looked almost as if he attempted to brake carefully – but even _carefully_ was too fast. In the wink of an eye – Sarah's, to be precise – the Sagitari vehicle caught up with him. There was an ear numbing boom – only alleviated by the radio connection through which she experienced it – and flashes of an explosion, sparks and metal pieces flying left and right. The young woman winced, trying to turn away from the sight. But since it was merely an image displayed in onto her visor, there was no other escape but to close her eyes and to wait for the noises to stop. After the first shock had eventually left her and she attempted to look back up, Sarah tried to glance past the camera picture at her friend. That was the Doctor's plan which had ended in such a horrible accident!

Next to her, the Time Lord did not move a muscle. His wide eyed gaze was fixed straight ahead, but his expression was so sincere, without any sympathy or regret displayed in it; One could have thought he had anticipated or even wanted for this to happen.

When Sarah's eyes were drawn back to the picture on her visor, it showed a trail of scorched ground, pieces of metal scattered along it. The team's colours which had been painted on them were barely recognisable any more. Further at the end of the trail laid the two vehicles. They could be identified still, but where one hovercraft ended and the other began was not so definite. Smoke was rising from the crash site. Something had caught fire. "T-The Master… is he...?", Sarah dared to ask the question that had to be uttered by someone, although she struggled with the words.

"By the heavens…", Terry exclaimed. He sounded just as shocked. "… I don't think he could have made it."

But she blinked confused. Behind the smoke that was blurring the camera image, something – or someone – was moving, a black figure. It could have been anything really; The motion did not last long enough for her to identify its cause.

"You are forgetting", the Doctor suddenly began, his voice strangely monotone and his face still without a trace of emotion. "that he and I are both Time Lords. It takes a lot to destroy one of us."

The relay of the camera feed was turned off, allowing Sarah now to fully see that odd expression her friend was wearing. It was one of those moments where he seemed so alien… or maybe just as alien as he really was. "You're saying that he will… regenerate?"

The Doctor did not reply. It was not really necessary, either… she understood that she was right. But just as Sarah looked down at her hands folded in her lap, she suddenly heard him take a breath and shift in his seat. As if breaking out of a moment of absent-mindedness, he took off his visor-like glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I misjudged him...", he said with a sigh, but not a sigh of sympathy. It sounded rather like he was disappointed in himself. "This was not meant to happen." After he had cleared his throat, the Doctor looked over to his companion and finally, there was that sorrowful shimmer in his eyes again that Sarah had already begun to miss.

She could have asked if he had anticipated it at least, but maybe she did not really want to know why he had acted that way. He knew a lot more about the Master than she did; There was some sort of history between them in the past and – if she knew anything about Time Lords at all – then that they would not let go of their current incarnation so easily. Maybe the Master would be vengeful on his return, making him an even greater threat than ever before. Sarah began to feel worried again as she pondered about the consequences of the Doctor's plan like that. But she decided not let herself get down by this. As long as she was around to save her friend's life, he would not have to go through whatever pain and suffering his greatest enemy had planned for him. No matter the cost, she would be there to prevent it.

In the end, the Master, too, was just one of the many foul creatures in the universe. And had they ever looked back at the Sontarans or Daleks or Cybermen who had died in the attempt to stop their evil? Sarah was not sorry for any of them. And maybe, if she had not witnessed the crash like that – not from a front row seat – she would not be thinking about the Master's possible demise, either.


	24. Places To Go! Things To Do! (Ep6)

Approximately an hour or an hour and a half later, the crew of GB1 had picked up their two replacement pilots and the vehicle, and returned to the team's garage. By the time the Doctor and Sarah had arrived there, no trace was to be found of the team's manager Robin Banks, but just in this moment the short man entered the garage from the hallway. Following him was the unusual looking Sagitari team leader, San Aria.

"The race is off! All results are null and void!", the Gabbo Beta manager announced as he walked in, hands held up high. Only as his sight fell on the travellers, he let his arms drop, sighed and shook his head. "Doctor, Sarah… what have you gotten us into?"

The two in question looked at each other. They were just standing there, next to Terry and his collection of screens, after having finally gotten rid of the jump suits and if Sarah would have had to give a serious answer, she would not have known where to begin. They might have gotten Banks into quite a bit of _trouble_ , if that was the word he was looking for.

"We have just returned from the office of the racing committee. It was a rather… fierce meeting they had.", San Aria began to explain. She was bending down her long neck slightly, trying to match everyone else's height. "As a result of it, and our evidence, however, they have decided not to bestow a trophy on the winner any more. Not this time, and not in the future. It will be only the certificate from here on."

"Would you believe it?", the Doctor sarcastically exclaimed. "They have finally figured out how dangerous it is to hand out resources for high energy weaponry! Only took them – what? Two to three centuries or so?" He looked back and forth between Sarah and Banks as if one of them was able to answer his mostly rhetorical question.

San Aria shot the Time Lord a glare. Apparently, she deemed his attitude inappropriate. "The political situation between Ibrimaxus and the federation of Abraxas will, of course, grow more tense."

"By my understanding, the Ibrimaxians had little to do with it.", Sarah decided to defend them and shook her head. "They were just a couple of hired hands. The Master used them, if not just as scapegoats." Although the Earth woman did not like the Ibrimaxus team, after what she had experienced under the Master's mind control, she could not imagine that the villain would look at anyone who served him as something else other than a tool.

Meanwhile, the Doctor was pacing around the garage. "Listen to her, she's right.", he added, before recovering his hat and frock coat.

"I'm afraid that is not for either of you to decide.", San Aria contradicted them. "If things were this easy, an investigation would not be necessary."

"Ah, of course.", the Doctor casually agreed with her, although by the tone of his voice he was still in a mocking mood. "Well good luck trying to question the Master. He will be far away by now."

Just as he mentioned their arch enemy again, a thought occurred to Sarah and she tapped her friend on the shoulder so that he turned to look at her. "By the way, Doctor… Didn't you say he would want to steal the trophy if he failed to win it?"

"Yes, but I don't think he will attempt that any time soon.", he tried to put his companion's mind at rest. "Remember my last regeneration? I was out for out for several days and I was merely recovering from radiation poisoning. Besides, if he suffers from post-regeneration trauma in a similar fashion as I did, his plan is very likely to fail even if he attempted it."

Sarah kind of wanted to reply something, but could not really find the words to speak. She remembered the time he mentioned well and at the same time did not want to be reminded of it. After a few seconds then, she quickly decided to ask about something else. "What after that, then? Has he won now? What will happen to the trophy that was planned to be used this year?"

"No one has won, I already told you.", Banks entered the conversation again and explained a little further. "They said that in respect to the damages done and people hurt, this year's race was cancelled. They might not even pick a new date for it." A smile, desperate for hope, appeared on the short manager's face. "I'm absolutely fine with that! I can blame all my losses on the saboteurs, and needn't worry about the upper management on Gabbo Beta giving me the boot!"

Sarah raised an eyebrow at the man. He had to be a bit delirious with stress.

"Well, all right. They still might – unless I can convince them that there is a chance to make up for everything next year.", Banks went back on his words and then mentioned something casually, with a lower tone to his voice, almost as if he did not want to say it. "By the way, the committee wants to thank you for your intervention."

As he heard the words, the Doctor just scoffed, unimpressed by such a half-hearted way of showing gratitude.

"Now, what about this year's trophy?", Sarah tried to get the whole of them back on track.

San Aria finally answered this question. "It will be destroyed, I suppose. Either way, there will be no access to it."

"And with the Master recovering from his regeneration, they'll have plenty of time to see to it now.", the Doctor almost interrupted her. As he spoke, he pushed himself past the crew members and nodded for Sarah to follow him. "Now if you will excuse us, it is time that we left." He jammed his floppy fedora hat onto his head and waited by the garage exit only for his companion to catch up with him.

"Are you not going to stay for the investigation? I'm sure the committee will have plenty of question to ask you.", San Aria wanted to know. Her attempt of stopping them was backed by Robin Banks, who pointed at the two travellers. "Oh yes, and the head of services back at Gabbo Beta will like to meet the two of you, too.", he mentioned.

Sarah did not mind running from these kind of duties, tedious as they could be. Standing in the doorway next to the Doctor, she shook her head. "I'm afraid we can't stay.", she merely said and waved good-bye to the team, before she turned and walked out.

The Time Lord was still holding the door open as he added:  
"We are busy people, you know? People to meet! Places to go! Things to do!"  
With a Cheshire cat grin on his face he waggled his fingers and called out "Bye-Bye!" before pulling the door shut behind him and running a few steps away.

Sarah could not help but laugh as he caught up with her, and he, too, was laughing when they were met with each other's gaze again.


	25. TARDIS Adventures - EPILOGUE (Ep6)

==== ==== EPILOGUE ==== ====

" **So then, Doctor, where to next?"**

It was Sarah-Jane calling for the Gallifreyan time traveller. Her voice rang through the TARDIS' second control room, corridors, and god knows how many other places this incredible space craft of his held.

" **Haven't decided yet."** , he yelled back. **"But I'm open for suggestions!"**

 _'_ _Just for a moment_ _'_ he had wanted to step deeper into the TARDIS. That was at least five minutes ago now. By the way she knew him, he had probably gotten sidetracked by something from what he had originally set out to do. Sarah sighed quietly as she looked about the control room. It had a wooden interior and beautiful stained glass windows in some of its circular wall panels. The console here was much smaller, looking a bit like a bureau, but lacking the moving time rotor of the other control room. Sarah used to watch it bob up and down while she waited for the TARDIS to land, but here, she could not do that. Still, she preferred this room. Simply because it looked more organic, if not even antique, not as clinically clean and stylised as most of the other TARDIS' interior.

" **Let's go home then."** , Sarah suggested loudly. **"Let's go back to Earth."**

Her place of origin was always in the back of her mind; Her friends and family who may or may not be waiting for her. Although the Doctor was great company, he could hardly make up for the fact that after such a long time of travelling together, she had begun to miss all of them a little.

The Doctor's booming voice echoed through the corridors.

" **Unimaginative!"** , was what he called her suggestion. Quite honestly, she had not expected much else from him.

She walked over to the door that lead to the TARDIS' inner chambers and secrets. Was it really necessary for them to have a conversation by shouting?

" **You said that you and I should visit the Louvre sometime!"** , his companion reminded him. Although Sarah hesitated for a short moment, she eventually left the control room and stepped into the white corridor to go and find her conversation partner. She was not really afraid to get lost in the TARDIS, because she deemed that she was on good terms with both the space craft and her owner. Someone would help her to find her way back in the unlikely case that she would really get lost.

" **Did I?"** As Sarah turned around a corner, she noticed his voice getting slightly louder, which reassured her that she was on the right track.

" **Did** **I** **also** **t** **ell** **you that I think the Mona Lisa might just be the prettiest painting in the universe?"**

" _ **Uh-huh."**_

She took another turn and walked down a slope just to end up in another corridor. Through a door to the right, she crossed a small hall, then something like a store room. Objects of all shapes and origin laid haphazardly scattered around, but Sarah did not feel like she had the time to examine them all. Still, she stopped and hesitated for a moment while she let her eyes wander around the room.

" **Well all right, let's go to Paris then!"**

His words caused her to wake from her thoughts and turn around. He needed to say something or else she might lose the direction his voice came from.

But after two more turns she had ended up in another one of those ever same looking corridors with the roundels on its walls again. Sarah-Jane sighed and placed her hands on her hips, looking around for the next door to turn to. Now that the Doctor had gone silent for several seconds again, she might really wind up getting lost. **"Doctor, where are you?** **Is it necessary for us to** **communicate** **across half** **of** **the TARDIS?** **"** , she tried to call out for him. Not necessarily for him to tell her where he was, but just to get some reply.

The sound of small plastic or metal wheels rolling past suddenly got her attention. Sarah spun around just in time to see the Doctor's colourful scarf disappear around a corner. With a few hasty steps forward, she rushed to catch up with him, but then she heard a door opening behind her, followed shortly by the same noise that set of small wheels made. As she stopped and turned back again, there he was;

The Doctor just spinning into the corridor unsteadily, a pair of roller skates on his feet.

"Are you giving yourself a tour of the TARDIS?", he wanted to know and looked at his companion with curiosity in his eyes. A smile played about his lips, ready to break into a wide grin any time.

"Me? No, I was just looking for you, so we wouldn't have to shout at each other.", Sarah explained quickly and also tried to suppress the need to laugh at his display of child like playfulness. Her chuckling, however, revealed that she was not very good at it.

"But we never shout at each other!" The Doctor argued, as if he had completely forgotten about that misunderstanding caused by the Master a little while back. He did not even allow Sarah the time to argue about it, instead he just suggested: "Would you like _me_ to give you a tour?"

Only then she noticed that he held his hands folded behind his back. Usually he did not act like this unless he was hiding an object from her sight. An expectant, almost excited look in his eyes, added to that impression, revealing to her that he was up to something. Sarah smiled at him, ready for whatever kind of mischief he had on his mind now.

"Of course I do."

"All right! But only if you can keep up!", the Doctor agreed, grinning finally, and before Sarah could ask him why he said that, he dropped a second pair of roller skates into her hands. While she looked at him slightly dumbfounded by the surprise, he turned on a heel and skated down the corridor at a pleasant pace.

"This is a very large place~", he called melodically just before he vanished around the next corner.

The young woman let herself drop to the floor to put on the roller skates as quickly as possible, determined not to let her crazy alien friend escape from her sight that easily!

"Oh, you! Don't you dare go without me!"

==== ==== End of EPISODE 6 ==== ====

* * *

 _AUTHOR'S NOTE:_

 _Hello, **you there** , who made it to the end of this story! Unless you skipped ahead because you thought things would get better the further you got, in which case I won't blame you. You don't need to read what you don't like.  
First of all; Thanks for reading this far! As a non-native English speaker, putting together a story this big seemed quite risking, with all the mistakes I still might make without noticing. It was a lot of fun to write though, and so in the end, I just hope my grammar is good enough to be read comfortably still._

 _The Master's accident at the end is obviously my personal attempt of explaining what happened between the Roger Delgado Master and his successor in 'The Deadly Assassin', Peter Pratt. I have to note that, although Roger Delgado died in a car accident (the reason why he stopped to portrait the Master), the cause of the Master's end here was not_ _ _specifically_ chosen to reflect the actor's death._

 _I realize that especially Episode 5/6 are more of the kind that would have fitted better with the Third Doctor, but since the majority of the story centers around the Master trying to break the bond of trust between the Fourth Doctor and Sarah, obviously, I won't change Doctors halfway through. Personally, I feel that story-wise the last bits were not as strong as the first and that I wrote them mostly for a completion of the story, but otherwise I think it turned out rather well._  
 _If you like to help me improve or just want to note something I might have missed (other than the many Who-typical plot holes maybe *wink wink*) just leave me a review!_

 _Ah, yes... (obviously) I don't own Doctor Who, and I write only for fun.  
But maybe I'm trying to advertise the old series to new fans! You're welcome, BBC!_


End file.
